Lacunae
by Loten
Summary: Lacuna: a gap or missing part, as in a manuscript, series, or logical argument. A collection of drabbles and one-shots set throughout the Immortals series. DN, many different themes/emotions, various points of view.
1. Introduction

_**Introduction**_

This is going to be my collection of scattered one-shots and drabbles, set throughout the Immortals series. (Anything set after Realms of the Gods will be published in a separate collection.) And, as with everything I do, this requires an explanation of how my insane mind works.

Most of these short stories are going to be set between the books. There may be missing scenes from inside the books, I don't know yet. Each one will be preceded by a brief summary and an explanation of where it fits in the timeline, and any warnings that I think are necessary – probably none. I was originally trying to keep them all in chronological order, but I'm going to keep thinking of ideas for years to come, I imagine, so that won't work.

Wild Magic is set in the spring and summer of Daine's thirteenth year. Wolf-Speaker doesn't take place until the autumn of her fourteenth; that means there's over a year to play with. Emperor Mage is set a year later, in the autumn of her fifteenth year, and Realms of the Gods starts just a few months after that, just before her sixteenth birthday. So there won't be many stories set between the third and fourth books.

Some of these will be canon – for example, Daine's encounters with hunters as a deer and a goose that she tells Kaddar about in EM, or when she and Numair discover that Stormwings hate onions that she tells Maura about in WS. Most of them will be entirely from my own head – be warned.

And sometimes I may ask for requests for stories; I cannot believe I'm even contemplating letting you lot ask me for things! You know I love you all, but seriously, you are all absolutely mental. And you know it. Anyway, that won't be until I run out of ideas and/or inspiration. If requests are open, I'll put a message up on my profile and have a thread open on my forum – contact me there, via site messaging, or if you don't have an account on here then leave an anonymous review on one of my stories and I'll see it.

These won't be updated to any kind of schedule. They're short stories, one-shots, drabbles. I'll be writing them whenever I'm inspired to do so or whenever I want a bit of a break from other stuff.

I'm also going to be deviating from Numair's point of view. I still love him to pieces, so you'll be seeing a fair amount of his perspective, but some scenes work better through someone else's eyes – mostly Daine, but sometimes other characters will get some screen time too. Some of them might surprise you. Some of them surprised even me.

I can promise plenty of silliness and non-romantic but nonetheless sweet fluff. Romantic stories – i.e. those set after Realms of the Gods – will be in another collection. If I manage smut, that will be published separately under a high rating. So these stories will all be purely platonic, but I assure you there will be plenty of cute moments, because as my regular readers and stalkers will already know, I'm a total sap. There will probably be some angsty moments too, and maybe even some action, shock horror. Probably some nerdy moments too, I have a couple of half-developed ideas for lessons between Daine and Numair that will basically be me rambling about their different magics.

On the subject of nerdiness; the title, Lacunae. A lacuna is defined as "a gap or missing part, as in a manuscript, series, or logical argument." I thought it particularly appropriate since most of these are going to be things that TP really should have written for us herself, and are thus missing parts. I feel Numair would approve.

To save my having to repeat myself, here is my disclaimer. None of the characters or places in these stories are mine. I merely torment them for my own perverse pleasure, especially Numair. I will eventually return him more or less unharmed, although perhaps slightly traumatised. This applies to all the stories in this collection.

I leave you with the immortal words of Mark Twain: _"__Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR."_

_**Loten.**_


	2. Fashion

_**Fashion**_

_**Summary: **__Not all the things Daine needs help with are serious magical crises. And Thayet can be dangerous in dress-making mode. Daine's POV._

_**Timeline: **__Shortly after Wolf-Speaker, just before Midwinter of Daine's fourteenth year._

_**Genre: **__Humour/Friendship_

_**Notes: **__This is a direct result of watching Blow Dry and therefore listening to Alan Rickman speaking with a passable northern accent in a film about hairdressers whilst writing. Somehow that metamorphosed into this – needless to say, it was written quite late at night. Beware silliness. Just a little semi-fluffy fic, about friendship and about Numair being... well, Numair. _

_-------------------------------------------_

Daine tried to stand still, flinching as yet another pin dug into her and doing her best to pretend that this was a bad dream. She had appealed to Tkaa what felt like hours ago, begging him to find someone to help her; the basilisk had been amused but had promised to try. She desperately hoped that it wouldn't be too much longer. The door clicked open, and Kitten chirped softly to greet whoever had come in; Daine could have wept with relief as a familiar voice asked lightly, "Thayet, _what _are you doing to my student?" Twisting, she craned her neck and found Numair leaning in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, grinning in open amusement, and gave him a pleading look.

"Go away, Numair," the queen answered impatiently. "This is a dress fitting, and I hardly think you're going to contribute anything useful."

"That's a _dress, _is it?" he asked impudently, studying the fabric draped over the girl and raising an eyebrow.

"It will be if you go away and let us get on with it."

"You can't be serious. It's ghastly."

Thayet straightened, scowling, and glared at him with flashing eyes and her hands on her hips. "And what would you know about it, master mage? You know nothing at all about fashion."

"True," Numair agreed cheerfully, abandoning the doorframe and wandering into the room. "I do, however, know rather a lot about what makes women look good, since I spend much of my free time admiring them. And _this _– " he pointed somewhat disdainfully at the proposed dress "– isn't it."

The queen scowled darkly. "What's wrong with it?"

"More or less everything," he informed her, walking in a slow circle around the captive Daine and studying her critically. "Starting with the colour. Daine _hates _pink – you _know _that, Thayet," he added reproachfully. "More than that, it doesn't suit her. Her complexion is wrong."

"Warm colours are in fashion at the moment," Thayet said defensively; Daine was getting somewhat irritated that her friends were acting as though she wasn't in the room.

"You're the queen, set a new fashion," he replied bluntly. "Next, the fabric – is it as stiff and uncomfortable as it looks?"

"It's worse," Daine groused.

"The things you women put yourselves through," Numair murmured, looking far too amused. "Who said fashion had to be painful? Make it out of something the girl can move in. And speaking of movement... Daine, can you actually move at the moment?"

"Noticed I'm here, have you?" she snapped at him. He raised an eyebrow; recognising his expression, she dropped her eyes and attempted to move. "Sort of."

"Sort of," he repeated, turning and looking at Thayet. "You're drowning her in lace, and ruffles, and the gods alone know what else."

"Numair," the queen said warningly, "be careful."

He raised his hands in conciliatory fashion. "This dress would look wonderful on someone else. On Daine, it looks terrible."

"And what would you suggest, since you're suddenly an expert?"

"Less trim, longer sleeves, a narrower and deeper neckline and not such a full skirt," he replied instantly. "Daine's fourteen. She's still developing her figure. Stop trying to invent curves that don't exist, and work with what's there."

Thayet and Daine both stared at him; the queen looked as if he had grown an extra head, while Daine was trying to decide whether she should be offended, embarrassed or grateful for her teacher's 'help'. He looked back at them both innocently, blinking long-lashed brown eyes; the girl strongly suspected that he was trying not to laugh, and scowled at him. Finally Thayet turned to stare back at her; the woman looked extremely annoyed as she muttered grudgingly, "Drat the man. He might actually have a point."

----------------------------------------------

"I hate you," Daine informed her friend when she was at last freed.

He fell into step beside her, giving her a wounded look. "Now, magelet, is that any way to speak to your knight in shining armour?"

"I wanted to be rescued, not laughed at."

"I can't do both?" he asked innocently, smiling when she glared at him. "I wasn't laughing at you, magelet. I was trying to be helpful. And it worked, didn't it?"

That wasn't the point, Daine decided. "You don't know anything about dresses," she muttered sullenly.

"I know what looks good on a woman and what doesn't," he replied mildly. "And I needed to convince Thayet she was wrong, otherwise you would have found yourself dripping pink lace everywhere. Even if I'd claimed you needed to come to a lesson, she'd have made the dress without you, and then it would have been ugly _and _badly fitting." After a moment he added in a more serious tone, "I am sorry if I embarrassed you, though."

She struggled with it, but he did have a point, and he had made sure she wouldn't be wearing anything dreadful at Midwinter. "I'd have been more embarrassed wearing that," she muttered finally.

Numair clearly chose to translate that as 'apology accepted, and thank you' and grinned at her. "Thayet does it out of love, you know. Everyone has to suffer sometimes." His eyes danced with mischief. "She even tried to force_ me _into a pink shirt once," he confided.

"Really?"

He nodded with a theatrical shudder. "I wore it for a grand total of ten minutes. All of which were spent in front of the mirror trying to convince myself that it wouldn't hurt to wear it just for one evening to keep her happy."

"So what did you do?"

"Unfortunately, magelet, I decided to check on an experiment of mine just before I left my rooms for the evening. Regrettably, something went wrong, and to my everlasting sorrow the shirt got somewhat singed," he replied, straight-faced. His eyes were laughing as he looked down at her.

Daine wavered, but in the end laughter won over her lingering irritation and she started to giggle. "Did she know?"

"I don't know. Probably, but she never scolded me for it. And she's never tried to have anything else pink made for me."

"I didn't think you really cared about clothes."

"I don't, normally, but there are limits," he told her cheerfully. "So, am I forgiven?"

"I'll think about it." That was nonsense, she knew. Since they'd met more than a year and a half ago, she had never been able to stay angry with him for long; no matter how dark her mood, he could always tease her into smiling again, even if it had been his fault. Even more irritating, he knew that.

------------------------------------------

_Heh. There are going to be a few of this sort of story, I think. We only see the major events in canon – it's nice to see some of the more everyday occurrences. It's also my first attempt at Daine's POV. Did it work? You tell me._

_**Loten.**_


	3. Blood

_**Blood**_

_**Summary: **__In Emperor Mage, Daine told Kaddar about the time when she was shot by bandits while in goose shape... Injuries aren't fun when neither of you can heal. Numair's POV._

_**Timeline: **__Spring of Daine's fifteenth year, about six months before Emperor Mage._

_**Genre: **__General/Action_

_**Notes: **__Firstly, thanks to my anonymous reviewers - I'm answering my reviews directly now rather than shout-outs here, so I can't respond individually, but your thoughts are always appreciated, as is your nagging for updates. As for this little story, Daine told Kaddar that they were rounding up unicorns in the spring when they were attacked by bandits and separated. She panicked and took goose shape, and got shot in the arm with a barbed arrow. Given that neither she nor Numair can heal humans magically, they get to have fun with field medicine instead. Ouch.  
_

_-------------------------------------------_

_I really don't like the sight of blood, _Numair reflected. _It usually means something's gone very wrong somewhere. _And at the moment he was slowly being covered in it. Gritting his teeth, he increased the pressure he was putting on the wound, his fingers slipping on bloody skin. Something had _definitely _gone wrong. "Hold on, Daine."

This was supposed to have been simple. They were rounding up killer unicorns; not the first time they'd done so, doubtless not the last. It had all been fairly routine... until the bandits had shown up. Numair had no idea where they'd been hiding, or why they'd attacked two travellers who clearly had nothing of value and were also clearly armed, but right now it was a moot point. The few survivors would be miles away by now – if they had any sense.

Cautiously he lifted his hand to see whether the bleeding had stopped. It hadn't, and he cursed softly, glancing worriedly at his student's white face. It was something of a miracle that she had been able to get back to him after being shot; he was just grateful that she had managed to change shape before passing out, since otherwise this would be a great deal more difficult.

Reapplying pressure, he looked around the makeshift camp at his little group of 'helpers' – two horses and a dragon. "Kit, go through the packs and find my medicine box," he ordered. "Then I need a pot of water and a fire." At any other time the sight of Cloud and Spots carrying sticks to pile them up next to him would have been funny, but not now.

When everything was ready, he bit his lip and looked down at Daine. "Magelet, can you hear me?" he asked softly, not sure if she was actually unconscious or just near it. He was rewarded with a faint movement that might have been a nod. "Look at me, please." She opened her eyes, glazed with pain, and struggled to focus on his face.

"Hurts," she whispered.

Numair clenched his teeth. "I know, sweet. It's going to hurt more before I'm done. I can't heal, remember, so we'll have to do this the old-fashioned way." He indicated the medical supplies set out next to him and saw her grimace in realisation. "I'm sorry," he said softly. "The arrow is barbed; it _has _to come out _now. _Otherwise..."

"I know," she replied hoarsely. Of course she did; she was the daughter of a healer. Numair was just rambling aloud the way he always did. Her head jerked in a stiff nod as she gathered the blood-soaked cloth of his cloak more closely around her with her good arm. "Do it."

"Try and keep your friends off me, please," he requested, doing his best to smile. "They might not realise that I'm trying to help." Half the local wildlife seemed to be gathered in the trees around them, which was extremely unsettling. Gingerly he took her hand and slowly extended her arm, wincing as she bit her lip. "Kit, come here and help."

The dragonet helped to hold Daine's arm steady, and Numair took a good look at the wound. It wasn't good; the barbed arrowhead had lodged in the muscle right by the elbow, and he strongly suspected it was caught on the bone. "I'm going to try and push it through," he said quietly. "If that doesn't work, I'm going to have to cut it out. I'm sorry, magelet. I can't even put you to sleep while I do it." Once again he cursed at the uselessness of his magic; being so powerful meant nothing when he couldn't actually _help _anyone.

"Can't be helped," she answered faintly, taking a deep breath and looking at the wound as dispassionately as possible. Lifting her eyes to his face, she tried to smile. "At least you're good at sewing."

Her attitude made it easier to smile back at her. "You never cease to amaze me," he told her, bending over the wound. "Anyone else would be crying."

"Would that help?"

"Not really, no." _I'm glad one of us is so sensible, at least. _"Hold still. This is going to hurt." Taking a breath, Numair gripped the arrow in one hand and her arm in the other; once he was sure of his grip, he pushed hard. It wasn't the first time one of them had been wounded on the road, and he'd been taking care of his own injuries for years, but that wasn't making him feel any better. The arrowhead grated on bone, and Daine made a strangled sound as she fought not to cry out; bile burned the back of Numair's throat, but he was committed now and forced himself to continue, leaning against the shaft to change the angle just enough that the head slid past her elbow and free.

His hands were wet and slick with blood as he drew away. "Half way there, magelet. I'm going to cut the head away now, then I have to pull the shaft back through. Then you're going to need stitches."

She was sweating and pale, but nodded tightly. Numair retrieved his knife from where it had been resting with the hilt caught on the edge of the pot of now near-boiling water; it wouldn't sterilise the blade completely, but it was the best he could do. As gently as he could, he raised Daine's arm to access the base of the arrowhead, then paused. Trying to saw through it with a knife would cause more damage as the shaft was worked back and forth, opening the wound further; but maybe there was another way.

"Kitten, come here." The dragonet scrambled to him, watching his face. He pointed to the arrow. "I need you to bite through this above the head, as close to Daine's arm as possible. One quick, clean bite – no splinters. Can you do that?" The small immortal tilted her head, studying the place he'd pointed to, then chirped softly and carefully angled her head to get her back teeth to the shaft. It took longer than Numair would have liked, but finally she had the position she needed; razor-sharp silver teeth snapped shut. As he had hoped, the wood of the arrow was no match for immortal teeth, and the arrowhead fell away cleanly.

"Healing with dragons now?" Daine asked hoarsely, white-faced and barely conscious.

"Whatever works," he replied absently, forcing himself to concentrate on the logistics of what he was doing and refusing to think about the fact that this was his friend bleeding and suffering. Gripping the arrow, he gritted his teeth and pulled sharply, drawing a cry from her. Blood made his hands sticky and he lost his hold; it took three attempts before he drew the shaft free. Daine's eyes were closed, her face pouring sweat as she struggled to breathe. "I'm sorry, Daine," he half-whispered as he threw the bloody arrow down.

"Not your fault," she answered shakily, trembling.

That had been bad, but the worst was yet to come. Somewhere between the fourth and fifth stitch, Daine fainted; that was hardly surprising, really. Numair had had to sew his own wounds without anaesthetic before and he knew exactly how much it hurt. He was actually relieved that she was unconscious; it broke his heart to hear her trying to hold back cries of pain. Concentrating intently, he kept going grimly until the last stitch was in place and the thread tied off before drawing away. Standing up, he quietly walked to the stream and began cleaning the blood from his hands, not bothering to fight the trembling that started in his muscles, and when his stomach cramped he made no attempt to stop himself from vomiting.

Feeling better for that, he rinsed his mouth out and returned to the patient, wiping his face with a now-clean hand. Bandages, and a sling to try and keep the arm as still as possible; then he would let her rest before they rode to the nearest healer. "You will be the death of me someday, magelet, I swear," he murmured as he unrolled the white gauze and began carefully wrapping her elbow. Recalling the date – it was less than two weeks until his twenty-ninth birthday – he added, "I'm getting too old for this."

------------------------------------------

_If you remember, I arbitrarily assigned Numair an early-April-ish birthday in Lost & Found to fill a narrative gap, so I'm continuing that here. We're never told when it actually is, as far as I know. Both Daine and Numair have a knack for finding trouble, and neither of them can heal, so I imagine that this certainly isn't the first time they've had to tend wounds the hard way. Incidentally, the two of them aren't a likely target for bandits, and it's not likely that Daine would panic just because she's been separated from Numair, either - I'm not sure what TP was thinking here. Still, it makes a good story, I suppose.  
_

_**Loten.**_


	4. Invisible

_**Invisible**_

_**Summary: **__'You haven't been bit 'til a dragon does it,' Daine told Kaddar once. Guess who found that out the hard way? Daine's POV.  
_

_**Timeline: **__Somewhere between Wild Magic and Wolf-Speaker; no specific time.  
_

_**Genre: **__Humour_

_**Notes: **__There's a reason I haven't updated until now - I was waiting for Amazon to deliver The Dragon Book to me so I could read The Dragon's Tale, since Kit features in this and I wanted to make sure I wasn't going against character. It's an awesome story, incidentally - it's got some really funny bits, and Spots and Kitten are both awesome. Sadly no fluff, though. Anyway, here we go.  
_

* * *

"_There _you are," Daine greeted her teacher. He opened one eye and looked up at her.

"Were you looking for me?"

"No, but Alanna is."

He grinned. "I know. That's why I'm out here."

She rolled her eyes and hunkered down into a crouch next to him, putting Kitten down. "What have you done now?"

Numair gave her his best innocent look; the effect was somewhat spoiled by the fact that he was obviously trying not to laugh. "Nothing."

"If you say so. She's not happy with you," she informed him.

"The Lioness lives to be unhappy," he replied airily. "She'll cope. And until she's calmed down, I'm staying here."

"You're not exactly well hidden," she noted.

He sat up slowly and smiled at her. "Not at this precise moment, no. But I don't know if you've heard this, magelet..." He leaned in closer as though about to confide a secret. "I can do magic," he whispered theatrically.

"Oh, shut up," she grumbled, trying not to smile – it would only encourage him. "You can turn yourself invisible?"

By way of an answer, Numair snapped his fingers and vanished. Daine whistled softly, impressed despite herself, looking at the grass still flattened beneath him. Kitten was less impressed; the dragonet shrieked in disapproval and trotted over, complaining loudly.

"Kit, hush." the girl said softly, frowning. "He's still there. I think," she added wryly.

Numair's voice came from empty air. "She knows that. She's a dragon; she can see through the spell. Kit, calm down..."

Far from calming down, if anything Kitten grew more angry, her voice rising in what was clearly a demand for the mage to stop the spell as her scales grew darker. When he didn't do so, the immortal hissed, spreading her diminutive wings before abruptly lunging forward and snapping. Numair reappeared with a yell of pain, swearing and clutching his now-bloody leg.

Daine grabbed her young charge and dragged her back, horrified. "Mithros, Kit, what did you do that for? Numair, are you all right?"

"Ow," the mage answered, gingerly rolling up his trouser leg and examining the bleeding punctures in his calf. Pinned in her guardian's arms, Kitten voiced a soft whistle that sounded half apologetic and half sullen. "Ow," Numair repeated, before shaking his head and looking up. "I'm all right. It's not as deep as it could have been, and it's not bleeding much."

"She's never bitten anyone before..."

He shrugged, licking a finger and dabbing at the bite. "Well, we've learned something today, magelet – dragons don't like invisibility spells. I'll know next time."

"You're taking this very calmly," Daine noted, less anxious in the face of her teacher's matter-of-fact attitude.

"Young animals bite when they're angry or upset or scared," Numair pointed out, rolling his trouser leg back down and gingerly stretching his leg out, wincing. "Until she's older she can't _tell _us what's wrong. In all fairness, she did warn me." He looked up and grinned. "But I never listen to warnings, particularly from females."

She rolled her eyes, smiling despite herself. "True. That's why you were out here in the first place."

"Exactly." Shaking his head, he looked at the dragon, who was now a washed-out grey colour and looked upset. Numair reached out and slid his fingers beneath Kitten's muzzle, turning her head to look at him. "It's all right," he told the young immortal gently, stroking her. "I forgive you – this time. But in future, just tell me off, please? I don't usually let my friends bite me." The dragon whimpered penitently and nuzzled his fingers. "All right, then." Numair braced himself and struggled to his feet, hissing in pain as he gingerly rested his weight on his bitten leg. "In fact, magelet, we've learned two things today."

"Oh? What was the second thing?"

He smiled wryly down at her. "Dragon bites _hurt._"

* * *

_Well, of course it was Numair on the receiving end. I live to torture him. In a way, though, I think he's almost proud - there can't be many people who've been bitten by a dragon and survived._

_**Loten.**_


	5. Nightmares

_**Nightmares**_

_**Summary: **__Everyone has bad dreams sometimes. They're never as bad if you're not alone.  
_

_**Timeline: **__Shortly after Wild Magic, Daine and Numair's second or third trip together.  
_

_**Genre: **Platonic fluff. Yes, that's a genre now.  
_

_**Notes: **__I'm afraid I've been writing very late at night again. This is probably a little too sentimental, really, but that's the way it turned out. Anyway, Daine has a nightmare and Numair deals with it. Different points of view.  
_

* * *

It was several nights into the trip when Numair was woken abruptly by the sound of his student crying out. Reflexes he barely knew he had meant he was standing and looking around before it registered that she was actually still asleep. Rubbing his eyes blearily, he watched her warily and quickly recognised what looked like a fairly intense nightmare; she twisted in her blankets and cried out for her mother again, and he winced in sympathy, reminded forcibly that for all her strength his friend really was just a girl still and it hadn't been so very long since she had lost her family.

The question was, what should he do about it? He very much doubted that she would want him to draw attention to it, and he doubted she wanted sympathy. Had he been the one suffering nightmares, he would have wanted her to pretend it had never happened, but he was older and well used to bad dreams. He could live without comforting far more easily than a scared and unhappy thirteen year old girl. Uncertain, he put off making the decision and instead began coaxing the fire back to life, reasoning that sometimes light helped, before sitting back and thinking hard.

When Daine cried out once more, wordlessly now, the pain in her voice decided him. He stood and crept around the fire to sit beside her and gently reached out to brush her hair back from her face, and when she drew in a sharp breath he knew she was waking. Withdrawing his hand, he turned back to the fire and stayed sitting quietly beside her, saying nothing and not looking at her, giving her time to gather herself and realise he was there.

Numair wasn't always able to react well to emotional situations, but he wasn't a complete idiot. He didn't ask if she was all right, because clearly she wasn't. He didn't ask what was wrong, because that was also somewhat obvious. He didn't ask if she wanted to talk about it, because if she did, she would. He knew what _not _to say; that was the easy part. What he _should _say was a mystery to him, so he took the wiser course and said nothing at all. Even when she started crying, he stayed silent, listening unhappily as she fought desperately to stop her tears; only when she sat up and pushed her blankets aside, obviously about to get up and go off by herself, did he intervene.

Still silent, he reached out without taking his eyes off the fire and gently touched her shoulder, moving his hand across her back carefully, ignoring the way she stiffened at the contact. Moving slowly, he slid an arm around her shoulders and gently but firmly drew her to him, not letting her pull away; she resisted for a moment before abruptly yielding and moving closer of her own accord, burying her face in his neck and starting to sob in earnest. Wrapping his arms around her, he held her in silence and let her cry.

* * *

Daine lost track of how long she cried. When her tears finally slowed, the fire was dying down once more and she was curled up almost in Numair's lap, her head aching fiercely and her throat sore. He hadn't moved, not really; his arms felt reassuringly tight as he held her, and she realised that he was humming very softly – so quietly that she felt it more than heard it, a faint vibration of sound. She didn't recognise the tune, but it was comforting.

She turned her face into his neck more tightly. His skin was warm and damp from her tears, his long hair brushing the side of her face. She could smell him, she realised distantly. There was the faint scent of soap, and under that the slight salt-musk of human sweat, and under _that _was the smell of his skin – he smelled of spices; cinnamon, vanilla, sandalwood, cloves, and others that she couldn't name. It was a warm, comforting scent, and she felt herself relax, wanting nothing more now than to go back to sleep. Maybe if she didn't move or say anything he would think she _was_ asleep; then she wouldn't have to try and explain or apologise until morning.

There was probably something terribly wrong about this, she told herself. But it didn't _feel _wrong to be curled up in the circle of his arms, listening to him so softly humming that nameless tune and feeling the reassuring strength of his body. She hadn't felt this safe since her mother had died. And Numair himself didn't seem to mind – he had chosen to hug her and let her cry, after all. She had a feeling that he understood. Closing her eyes, she inhaled his warm, sweet-spice scent again, utterly exhausted.

When she woke briefly later on it was still dark and she was curled up in her blankets once more. The fire was still burning brightly; opening one eye cautiously, she realised that was because Numair was still awake, sitting a little further away from her now and feeding twigs into the flames. He looked tired and even as she watched he stopped humming and bit lightly on his knuckles to stifle a yawn, but he made no attempt to return to his own bedroll. When the urge to yawn had apparently passed, he began to hum again, the same gentle, soothing tune as before. She realised he must have been sitting there all night, ever since she had fallen asleep, and she wanted to tell him that he didn't have to, but she fell asleep again before she could form the words.

He looked absolutely exhausted the next morning; his eyes were bloodshot and deeply set with bruised shadows beneath them. She wondered if he had slept at all and strongly suspected that he hadn't, that he had stayed awake all night keeping the fire going. Despite his obvious weariness – he kept yawning when he thought she wasn't looking – he seemed cheerful enough and he made absolutely no mention of the night before.

She wondered if he was embarrassed, but when she attempted to apologise and to thank him he gave her a look of wide-eyed innocence that wouldn't have fooled a three year old and assured her that he had no idea what she was talking about, and she realised he was trying to spare her from feeling ashamed. Gratefully she followed his lead and didn't mention it again, but the following night as she lingered on the edge of sleep she recalled how safe she had felt when she knew he was watching over her, and as she fell asleep she was glad he was there.

* * *

_Sometimes, just sometimes, Numair actually does the right thing. It doesn't happen often, admittedly._

_I've got a busy week or so ahead of me, and I'm working on other fics, so don't be cross if I don't update for a little while. I promise, I haven't gone anywhere. Also, there will be a reverse of this story at some point, when Numair's the one who has the bad dream, but that's only half finished and needs work._

_**Loten.**_


	6. Flight

_**Flight**_

_**Summary: **__Being a shapeshifter means lessons can be fun. Numair's POV.  
_

_**Timeline: **__Shortly after Wolf-Speaker.  
_

_**Genre: **__General/Humour/Friendship/I don't know.  
_

_**Notes: **__I have had writer's block like you would not believe. I've got so many short stories for this series that are half-written and I ran into a wall on. My laptop finally dying for good didn't help. Still, it's done now; here, have a daft little story about flying lessons.  
_

* * *

Numair had been watching his student carefully ever since they'd returned from Dunlath. He could tell she was restless and unhappy, and for a time he let her be before he gently began returning to their former routine. Finally one morning he judged that the time was right, and informed Onua that she would have to do without her assistant for a few days as they were going to the tower for a while, a move that earned him a scowl from Daine when he told her.

"That's a charming expression," he told her dryly. "It can't be helped, magelet – we have work to do in the next few days."

"Oh joy," she groused, clearly not in a good mood. "More lessons."

"More lessons," he agreed with a straight face, trying not to smile. "You don't sound happy at the idea – does this mean you don't want to learn to fly after all?"

The look on her face almost destroyed him completely, surprise turning to a mixture of shock and delight. "Really?"

"Really."

* * *

"Come on, let's go to my work room – we're staying inside for the moment. You probably won't want anyone else seeing this – the first attempts are always embarrassing," he added dryly, vividly recalling his own clumsy attempts to teach himself flight. He hadn't had anyone to teach him, either; it had taken months before he'd finally mastered it.

They sat beside one another as Numair picked up a book on birds. "The first step is to choose what shape you want to start with. Once you've got the hang of things, you can try other shapes, but for now we'll stick to one. It ought to be fairly close to my shape if possible, just to make things easier."

"You're not a real hawk, though," she pointed out, flicking through the pages to the section on raptors.

"No, but close enough for this. Remember that as a female you're going to be larger, so don't pick something like a golden eagle yet. Do you want me to shift so you can compare?"

"No. I think I remember," she told him dryly as she slowly leafed through the book, finally settling on a spotted falcon.

"All right. Now you need to shift and get yourself used to a bird shape. Take your time with it, and don't try flying yet!" He turned his back and waited patiently until finally a curious Kitten chirped, echoed by a soft noise that was definitely birdlike. Looking back, he found himself being examined by a falcon whose eyes were far more intelligent than those of any bird, and smiled. "Well done."

Daine spent a few minutes obediently getting used to this new shape, extending her wings and flexing her talons, looking around and growing used to her new senses – Numair remembered how disorientating a raptor's vision was in comparison to a human. "All right," he said finally, pointing to a folded blanket on the floor beside her. "Change back, and we'll talk."

They discussed the shift briefly, comparing similarities and differences – Numair was extrapolating from his own shapeshifting to teach her this, but it didn't work in quite the same way, which meant he occasionally had to do some very quick thinking to keep up.

"All right, magelet, I think we're ready to make a start. You already know the structure of the wings, where all the bones and muscles are, and you have an advantage because if you encounter a problem you can simply ask a nearby bird about it. Some of us weren't so fortunate," he added with an ironic smile; he'd had to do a lot of fast talking to explain some of his injuries to a healer. "Your experience sharing the eagle's mind in Dunlath might help, too. That said, _take it slowly. _Don't expect it to work the first time, either. Now I'm going to shift and try to show you in slow motion what you need to do to take off and land – any questions will have to wait until I've shifted back again. Watch very closely – not just the wings, but the tail and feet as well."

"Where did the perches come from?" Daine asked curiously.

"I raided the palace mews before we left," he admitted cheerfully. "Watch." Crouching, he closed his eyes and concentrated, feeling the magic dancing across his skin – he would never in a thousand years have admitted it, but he'd spent quite a bit of the past week practising his flying, partly so he could actually teach her and partly to try and avoid making a fool of himself.

Blinking to grow accustomed to his new vision again, he picked his way carefully across the floor to one of the perches and hopped onto it. Daine stretched out on her stomach nearby and propped her chin in her hands, watching him intently; an equally intent dragonet crouched on the other side of the perch, apparently fascinated. Flexing his talons on the scarred wood of the perch, he settled his feet and spread his wings, sternly resisting the urge to strike a pose and show off.

Leaning forward slightly, he slowly angled his wings; moving this slowly, he wouldn't actually be able to take off, but that wasn't the point of this demonstration. Concentrating, he crouched slightly and spread his wings a little further, raising them fractionally and lifting his tail; holding the position for a moment, he looked around to ensure she was watching, then straightened and brought his wings down. Returning to a normal stance, he turned a little to show her his profile and repeated the sequence from a different angle; after several such repetitions he hopped off the perch and changed back.

"That was only a rough idea, but it's a start," he told her. "It will be different in here because there's no moving air; it will be harder to take off and start flying, but once you're moving it will be easier inside. You're not ready to cope with air currents just yet. Any questions?"

"Can I try now?"

Numair tried not to laugh. Her impatience and eagerness reminded him of his own, and would doubtless have the same outcome. "In a minute. I'll shift back and take off first, so you can see it at normal speed."

"I _have _seen birds fly before, Numair. I used to train hawks for folk, back in Snowsdale."

He raised an eyebrow and sat back. "All right, magelet. If you think you know what you're doing, be my guest." She shifted immediately and struggled out from under the blanket, awkwardly scrambling onto the perch and crouching with her wings spread. Resigned, Numair watched as his student inevitably crashed onto the floor with a shriek of mingled dismay and anger.

As she struggled upright, he folded his arms and looked down at her. "Ready to concede that perhaps your teacher knows what he's talking about?" he asked mildly. Daine gave him a murderous look and sullenly retreated to her blanket; he closed his eyes briefly and waited until she spoke.

"All right, why didn't it work?"

Opening his eyes, he smiled slightly. "You forgot your tail – the wings give lift, but the tail gives direction. And you were rushing too much – take a moment to get a good footing without gripping too hard with your talons, so you can push off easily. Speed comes with practice." Inspiration struck. "It's like with your bow – now, you can nock an arrow and fire almost without pausing to aim, but when you first started shooting you'd have needed to take your time and set yourself up against the target."

"I s'pose that makes sense," she admitted grudgingly. "Was it that bad?"

"Not for a first attempt, no," he told her reassuringly. "It's not going to work first time, even with me to talk you through it and demonstrate."

"How long did it take you?"

"I didn't have a teacher for this," Numair reminded her. "I watched my master's birds, and I studied avian anatomy until I was dizzy, but I was essentially making it up as I went along. It took me several days and a lot of bruises before I finally stumbled onto the trick, and it was a long time before I could really fly properly."

"Can I try again?"

"In a moment. Watch me first. And pay attention to the landing as well." He shifted again – this was why he'd insisted on taking several days at the tower to do this, rather than trying to fit it in around their other duties. It was going to involve a great deal of shifting back and forth, and that was going to be tiring for them both. Hopping back onto the perch, he spread his wings and crouched before launching himself upwards; it _was _harder in the still air of the workroom, but he'd expected it and compensated without thinking about it.

Gliding across the room in a straight line, he landed briefly on another perch over near the window and turned around – steering could come later; a straight line was easiest to start with – before flying back to her. He did his best to slow down the landing this time, so she could see him flare his wings and drop his tail, reaching down with his claws as he closed his wings and almost lowered himself onto the perch.

Looking at her, he tilted his head inquiringly, wishing briefly that they could speak to one another – it would have made things a lot easier. She hesitantly held out an arm; it took him a moment to work out what she was doing, but when he understood he stepped carefully onto her forearm, trying not to grip too hard as she lifted him closer to her face.

Briefly a memory stirred; he vaguely recalled the sensation of being carried, from somewhere in the drug-induced haze of their first days together. Impulsively he stretched out a wing to brush the tips of his feathers against her cheek, making her smile.

By now, Numair knew his friend remarkably well, and he wasn't at all surprised when her smile turned mischievous. When she abruptly jerked her arm down and in against her body, he was already leaping clear, beating his wings hard to gain height. Circling, he landed and shifted back, raising an eyebrow at her and fighting a smile. "That was stupid," he commented. "If I hadn't been expecting it, I would have scratched you badly. There's a reason falconers wear gloves, you know."

"Killjoy," she retorted. "Can I try again now?"

"Go ahead."

* * *

An hour later Daine was somewhat bruised and clearly frustrated, and Numair called a halt to the lesson. "We'll try again tomorrow," he told her. "Don't take it so personally. I wasn't expecting you to manage first time; I did warn you it wouldn't be easy. We've got all week – in fact, we've got all the time in the world. There's no rush. If you like, talk to some of your friends tomorrow before we start, see if any of them have some advice. And _don't _spend all night trying to practice by yourself, either," he added warningly.

She nodded morosely, and he put an arm around her shoulders, hugging her. "Cheer up, magelet. You're doing much better than I did. I rigged some ropes in my room so I could start by jumping off something high for my first attempt..."

Daine took the bait, looking up at him. "What happened?"

He smiled ruefully at her. "I broke my arm in three places and had to come up with a story involving trying to climb onto the roof to tell the healer."

The story brought the laugh he'd hoped for, and she looked marginally more cheerful. "Really?"

"Yes. I thought the height would give me enough time to figure out what I was doing before I hit the ground. It didn't work, obviously," he added with a wry grin.

"You thought it would?"

"I didn't know flying was complicated," he argued playfully as they went downstairs. "If any other shapeshifting mages chose a bird, they didn't leave instructions behind. And it _looked _easy when I watched real birds. Anyway," he added, "you've got no room to laugh at me – admit it, you didn't think it would be difficult either."

She made a face at him, and he grinned. "That's what I thought."

* * *

Numair forced himself awake not long after dawn the next day, knowing his student would already be up and desperate to continue. He looked out of the window and found her outside talking to a kestrel, and left her to it while he made breakfast; after they had eaten, they returned to his workroom, Daine wearing a look of fierce determination that made him smile. Clearly she wasn't going to let herself be beaten.

Whether it was that stubborn attitude or something the kestrel had told her or something else entirely, by noon she had mastered the short glide between the two perches and was beginning to learn how to change direction. In fact, she was doing so well that after lunch Numair moved the lesson outside and began teaching her about compensating for the air currents, how to move with them or avoid them.

She spent most of the next few hours deep in conversation with what appeared to be every bird in ten miles; Numair was mildly surprised to note just how many different species there were around here. Finally as the sun began to set she looked up at him, her eyes gleaming. "Got it."

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

"Go on, then."

It was all she needed. He hadn't seen her change so quickly before; the falcon shot skywards with a screech of pure triumph that made him laugh, and he stood shading his eyes and watching proudly as she executed a series of quite complicated manoeuvres with only one near-miss with a tree branch. Daine's enthusiasm was contagious; after a few minutes he simply couldn't resist shifting himself and taking off to join her.

What started out as a fairly sedate flight degenerated rapidly and within minutes the two mages were playing an insane game of chase, watched from the ground by an envious Kitten. Somehow, Numair wasn't much surprised to note that in just a few days she had mastered flight more effectively than he had after years of practice. The black hawk would have laughed if he could have; for all his poorly-hidden competitive streak, there were times when he didn't object to losing.

* * *

_I can't imagine that a gangly teenage Arram would be any more graceful as a bird than as a boy. TP had better include that in his book. Then again, I've got a list as long as my arm of stuff I want her to include._

_This is a very busy time of year, but I promise to get some Midwinter-themed fluff written for you by Christmas, and hopefully something before then. As always, thank you for all your reviews._

_**Edit: **Literally just got a message informing me that Divine Intervention and Lost & Found have been nominated to the Circle of Ficship contest. When voting opens I'll be sure to let you know. Thank you, everyone, especially KrisEleven for nominating me.  
_

_**Loten.**_


	7. Starlight

_**Starlight**_

_**Summary: **__A late-night conversation about stars. Daine's POV._

_**Timeline: **__Anywhere, really._

_**Genre: **__Friendship/Philosophy. Yes, really. Bear with me here.  
_

_**Notes: **__The inspiration for this one came from an X-Files quote, where Scully is talking to Skinner about a conversation she and Mulder once had about starlight. I do find inspiration in the oddest of places, don't I. A few of my regular readers seem to have vanished - are you all still alive? Many thanks to all my anonymous readers, too.  


* * *

_

"Numair, what are you doing?" Daine asked sleepily, struggling to focus on her friend's shadowy form in the darkness. "It's the middle of the night."

"I didn't mean to wake you."

"You didn't." Stifling a yawn, she sat up. "I just woke up, and saw you awake. What are you doing?"

"Stargazing," he admitted sheepishly; even in the dark, she saw him smile. "Go back to sleep."

That was easier said than done, now that she was awake. Rubbing her eyes, she shook her head and smiled back at him. "What is it with you and stars? Anyone'd think you'd never seen them before." She had once thought that the jokes about him ruining his clothes stargazing and watching meteor showers were just that, jokes; she knew better now.

"I don't know. I just think it's fascinating." He looked at her. "What have I taught you about the stars?" he asked. "I know we talked about the constellations, and the stories behind them, but have I ever talked about what they actually are?"

Curious now, Daine crawled out of her bedroll carefully and moved to sit beside him, looking up at the starry sky. "I don't think so. If you did, I don't remember." She hadn't really thought about it before. Then again, Numair was very good at that; most of their lessons were fairly ordinary, but every so often he'd ask a question so utterly outside the realm of her experience that it would throw her completely and get her thinking about entirely new concepts. It was one of the reasons he was a good teacher, although sometimes it could be infuriating.

"They're essentially fireballs," he said softly, lying back and supporting himself on his elbows, staring upwards. "Spherical clouds of burning gases, and dust, and things like that. They can be hundreds of miles across."

"Then why do they look so small?" she asked, stretching out next to him and feeling a warm weight on her legs as an interested Kitten came to listen to the conversation. "Is it something to do with the atmosphere?" He'd mentioned something similar once when they had been discussing weather magic, but the details hadn't really sunk in.

"Not really, although I'm sure that plays a part. It's because they're so far away. The sun is a star, the closest one to us, much closer than the others. Everything you see up there is an unimaginable distance away – literally billions of miles."

"Really?"

"Yes."

She thought about this for a while, staring up and trying to imagine it. "How do you know?" she asked finally. They certainly didn't _look _like they were that far away.

His smile could be heard in his voice as he answered. "It was discovered about half a century ago, by mages from Tyra, oddly enough. I don't know how they did it; there was a great deal of mathematical calculation involved, and that's never been my area of expertise or interest." That was certainly true. He was terrible with numbers.

"So what's between here and there?"

"We don't know." He lay down completely, folding his hands behind his head. "Possibly nothing, just empty space. Some say that's where the realms of the gods lies. It's just speculation; there's no way to know for certain."

"Is that what interests you about stars? That we don't know what's between us and them?"

"No. It's that they're so far away." Numair paused to take a slow breath, the way he did when he was gathering his thoughts before trying to explain something complicated. "Much of what you can see isn't actually there any more, you know. The distance is so great that the light from the stars takes years to reach our world; some of those stars have burned out, or moved, but their light is still travelling towards us, so we haven't realised yet. This light we can see now – " he held up a hand, the faint silvery light illuminating his fingers "– is billions of years old, older than our world is. The star that cast it is probably dead, and has been for millennia, but the light is still here, travelling through time. Starlight doesn't die."

Daine stared upwards and thought about what he had said, knowing that she would never look at the night sky in quite the same way again. "All right," she said finally, "I admit, that is fascinating."

–_No, it's not,_– Cloud informed her mistress grumpily. –_Sleep is important, and you waste it chattering like magpies about things that you can't prove are even real._–

Laughing softly, the girl translated the pony's words for Numair, who grinned in the darkness. "Leave it to your friends to bring me back down to earth," he murmured. "She's right, though. Sleep _is_ important, and we've got a long day tomorrow."

Nodding agreement, she returned to her own bedroll and settled down once more. "Good night, Numair."

"Good night, magelet."

* * *

_I'm not a hundred per cent convinced that this works in the Tortallan universe. I don't know how old their planet is or how much they'd be able to find out about the universe. But hey, who cares? I just thought it was a rather neat idea that would catch Numair's imagination. Plus a cameo from Cloud - the horses are actually a lot of fun to write. Anyway, I'm still pretty busy, but you'll get your Midwinter fluff before Christmas, I promise.  
_

_**Loten.**_


	8. Midwinter

_**Midwinter**_

_**Summary: **__Daine's first Midwinter in Tortall isn't really what she was expecting. Families are funny things. Mostly Daine's POV._

_**Timeline: **__Late December of her thirteenth year, about half a year after Wild Magic._

_**Genre: **Platonic fluff (again).  
_

_**Notes: **Well, this ended up a lot longer than I planned it. I know, I know, you were all hoping for romance... I'm working on it, I promise! Anyway, here's a dose of fluffy winter warmth for you all to read while hiding from your crazy relatives. I'm blaming Alan Rickman for this one too, purely because Love Actually was on while I was proofreading this. I'd already written it, but that's not the point._

* * *

"Here comes trouble," Onua murmured wryly.

"What?" Daine looked around blankly; the only other person in sight was Numair, and – for once – her teacher didn't look like he was up to anything he shouldn't be. He was wandering down towards them by the horse paddock with his hands in his pockets, whistling an old Midwinter tune cheerfully.

"It's the first day of the Midwinter festival today."

"I know," Daine replied slowly, frowning at the Horsemistress. "So?"

"So, Numair's like a small child at this time of the year. I don't know why." Onua looked thoughtful for a moment, before shrugging and smiling at her assistant. "Just warning you now. Don't be deceived into thinking it's sweet, or anything. By the end of the week you'll want to hit him with something."

"Who's hitting whom now?" Numair inquired, close enough to have caught the end of the sentence as he picked his way over the snowy path cautiously.

"Eavesdropping is rude, you know," Onua replied, kicking a chunk of compacted snow at him. "Don't you have last-minute shopping to do?"

Choosing to ignore that, Numair brushed snow off the top rail of the fence. "Actually, no. I was organised this year, for once. I did see Raoul leaving in a hurry earlier, though, so I'm sure he's forgotten somebody." Hauling himself up to sit on the railings, he looked over at his student. "Good morning, magelet. Not frozen to death yet, working out here in this ghastly weather?"

"Not quite," Daine replied with a small smile, craning her neck to look up at him. "I thought you liked this time of year?"

"Been telling tales, Onua?" the mage murmured, giving his friend a wry look that the K'mir pretended not to notice. "I like Midwinter. I don't like _winter. _It's far too cold."

Daine nodded heartfelt agreement, but couldn't resist adding, "You should've been in the mountains if you think this is cold."

He shuddered theatrically. "No, thank you."

"If it's so cold, why are you out here?" she asked.

"Looking for you."

"We don't normally have lessons until later..."

"No, I know. We're doing something different today." Shivering, he looked around. "It's miserable out here. Let's go inside where it's warmer."

"Onua?"

"Go on," the K'mir told her. "I'll be along later, I expect."

"Along where?" Daine asked her teacher as he led the way back towards the palace, humming to himself.

"We're helping decorate the palace for Midwinter."

She blinked. "Don't the servants usually do that?" _I mean, it _is _a palace._

"Oh, they'll do most of it," he agreed cheerfully, "but Thayet likes the personal touch. And she likes ordering her friends around," he added with a grin. "Besides, it's a tradition. Midwinter's about family and friends; it's not the same if it's all done by servants."

Daine was starting to see Onua's point. She agreed with Numair, but she wasn't even fourteen yet. The same attitude from a man in his late twenties seemed strange. Spotting her expression, he grinned and shook his head. "It's not just me, magelet. We all secretly love the festival, even if we pretend not to. Although I will admit – since you've no doubt been told anyway – that I'm worse than most. You've not seen Midwinter celebrations until you've seen Tortall at its best." He paused, frowning slightly the way he did when something had suddenly occurred to him, before asking quietly, "What's the festival like in Galla?"

"I don't really know. It was always just the three of us. We decorated the house, and I know all the songs and stories, and we gave each other gifts, but that was about it." Changing the subject, she asked, "What about in Tyra?"

He snorted softly. "You'd barely recognise it as Midwinter. There's a festival on the solstice, but it's only three days, not a week. It's far more serious, and there's more emphasis on the religious side, especially Mithros – the shortest day of the year, the rebirth of the sun and so on. Usually only the children receive presents. All in all, it's normally a rather depressing affair, especially since it's almost always raining. Tyra's too far south for snow. And it's no more festive in Carthak, either."

"Is that why you like Midwinter here so much?" she asked curiously; her friend didn't talk about his past very much.

"Partly, yes," he agreed. "And partly it's the company."

"You don't go home to see your family?"

"No. I'd rather be here."

When he didn't elaborate, she took the hint and stopped to look around; they were almost at the palace. "Oh, I need to go and get Kitten; she decided to sleep in this morning."

"All right magelet. I'll see you inside." He started whistling again before he'd gone three steps, and Daine couldn't help smiling as she resisted the urge to hum along – the tune was a common Midwinter song throughout the Eastern Lands and had always been one of her favourites. She didn't see the problem with being a little childish at this time of year.

* * *

The hall was in complete and utter chaos when she arrived with a sleepy dragonet in tow; blinking, Daine edged warily around the throng to find Numair. He was idly juggling pine cones one-handed and watching the proceedings with a smile tugging at his lips. Even as she watched he flicked another cone into the spinning circle. "Show off," she told him.

"If you've got it, flaunt it," he replied with a grin; he didn't even seem to be paying attention to what he was doing. "So what do you think, so far?"

Daine studied the crowded hall and gave her honest opinion. "It looks like a forest exploded. With candles in it."

He started to laugh and almost dropped the cones. "It does, rather, doesn't it?" he agreed, hastily changing to both hands. "You wait until it's finished, though. You won't recognise the place."

"I barely recognise it now. Does this happen every year?"

"Yes." Deftly flicking the pine cones to Kitten one by one, Numair paused and grinned in sudden mischief before throwing the last cone out into the hall. Someone yelped from the heart of the crowd, and the mage's expression became innocent as he turned to look in the other direction.

She rolled her eyes at him, trying very hard not to laugh with only partial success. "Aren't you supposed to be helping?"

"According to a very specific definition of the word, yes. I am supposed to be doing as I am told. And I was told to stand over here until I was needed." He smiled wryly at her and leaned back against the wall. "I'm mostly here because of my height anyway. I dare say I will end up climbing on furniture at some point. Apparently that is the easiest method of reaching the higher places." Rolling his eyes, he bent to pick Kitten up; Daine noticed with some amusement that he had tucked a small piece of holly behind the tie that held his hair back. "I'll have to lift the chandelier down so that the candles can be replaced, too."

"Numair!" Alanna's voice cut through the din.

"Here we go. Come on, magelet." He waded into the crowd, seizing a bundle of pine twigs from a table on his way past. Shaking her head, Daine followed.

* * *

"Numair, have you seen Daine?"

"Pardon?" Numair wasn't really listening. True to his prediction several hours earlier, he was currently balancing on a not particularly stable stack of furniture, attempting to rearrange a holly branch along the rail above a window.

"The left needs to lift up a bit," Thayet called from below. "No, my left."

"I asked if you'd seen Daine," Onua repeated patiently.

"I thought she was helping you," he replied, wincing as yet another thorn dug into his finger.

"She was, but now I don't know if she's in here. How did she seem earlier?"

"Hold on." Numair shifted his position carefully and stretched onto his toes, straining to reach the branch that was causing problems and hoping that this year he wouldn't fall off anything.

"That's it," Thayet declared finally, before turning and starting to instruct some other poor soul.

Numair gingerly climbed down and turned his attention to his friend. "What were you asking?"

"I asked if Daine was all right earlier."

He thought about it for a few moments. "I'm not sure," he admitted finally; it had been bothering him all day. "She seemed all right, but you know Daine – if something's wrong, she won't say anything until she really has to."

"I thought she was better about that now."

"She is, but she's also incredibly stubborn," he replied fondly before his smile faded. "I don't know. It's her first Midwinter without her family. It's easy to see why she might want a little time alone."

"Brooding won't help."

"True."

"Do you know where she might have gone?"

Numair quickly listed Daine's usual haunts in his mind; he wasn't certain he knew them all, but... "I think so. I'll go after her. Is Kit with her?"

"No, which is why I didn't realise she had gone. Kitten's 'helping' Alanna at the moment."

"Keep an eye on her, then. And don't let her eat any berries if you can help it."

"Kitten, or Alanna?"

He snickered. "I won't be long."

* * *

He'd guessed right; he found her in the small clearing on the trail past the horse field where they had seen the undine all those months ago. Crunching over the frozen ground towards her, he brushed the snow from the log she was sitting on and sat next to her, looking at the icy surface of the small pond without speaking. They sat in silence for a while before he asked softly, "Are you all right?"

"Yes."

"Are you, or are you just saying that?" he asked, and smiled slightly when she looked at him. _I know you too well, magelet. _

After a long moment she turned back to her contemplation of the pond. "I'm all right. It's just fair strange, Midwinter without Ma and Grandda."

"It's all right to miss them, you know," he said quietly. "Nobody's going to think any less of you for grieving. And they won't think any less of you for enjoying yourself, either," he added, remembering the early days after they had first met, when any sign of happiness had led to an almost guilty reaction.

"I know that. But..."

"Knowing something and feeling it are two different things," he finished, and she nodded.

"Exactly."

"Nobody's going to make you do anything you don't want to do, Daine. If you want to join in with all of us being silly and throwing pine cones at each other and singing out of tune, you can. If you'd rather be alone for a while, that's all right, too. But next time, tell someone where you're going, please. That's why I'm out here – your friends missed you."

When she looked at him, he smiled gently. He knew how she felt. Midwinter was very much a family-orientated festival, and the only family she had known were dead. His own relatives were alive and well, but stilted and awkwardly polite letters a few times a year didn't really create a warm and loving atmosphere. Visiting them wouldn't do them or him any good; Tyra wasn't his home any more, and in some ways it never had been. They didn't know what to say to him, and he didn't know what to say to them. He would much rather spend the festival here, with his friends. His own first Midwinter here had been the first time he had felt that he truly belonged.

"Family doesn't always have to mean blood relations, magelet," he remarked, his voice soft. "We didn't ask you to help because of your skill with pine needles. You're one of us now."

The widening of Daine's eyes before she hastily looked away told him that against all expectations he had managed to say the right thing. _I need to remember this, because it probably won't happen again. _Draping an arm around her shoulders – she was freezing; he wondered just how long she had been sitting out here – he hugged her, and after a moment she hugged him back.

Drawing away, she looked at him. "You're shivering."

Startled at the near-echo of his own thoughts, he grinned at her. "Of course I'm shivering. In case you hadn't noticed, it's snowing quite hard out here."

"I _hadn't_ noticed," she admitted, looking around them. Without the white gleam of the snow on the ground, it would have been pitch dark. After a pause, she said carefully, "I s'pose we should go back where it's warm..." Her tone made it almost, but not quite, a question.

"Good idea," he agreed gently, standing and offering a hand.

She let him help her to her feet. "Your fingers are cold!"

"So are yours," he retorted. "Come on, before we both turn into icicles."

This time when he began irrepressibly humming to himself as he walked, she joined in, their voices blending with the snow as they headed back towards the warm lights in the windows of the palace that had become their home.

* * *

Near the end of the festival, Daine was watching a snowball fight that had started out involving only the Conté and Trebond children and had ended up – largely thanks to Numair, who was now being targeted by absolutely everyone – involving almost all her friends, royal and otherwise. As she watched the most powerful mage in the Eastern Lands, possibly in the world, collapse under an onslaught led by the King's Champion and the Knight-Commander of the King's Own, she decided that her new family was as much fun as the old one and a lot stranger. Laughing, she bent to seize a handful of snow and ran to join in.

Predictably, Numair lost. There was even snow crusted on his eyelashes when the fight finally wound down, and he was soaked to the skin and shivering as they trudged back up the hill towards the palace. It hadn't dislodged his grin, though, and she shook her head at him as they walked. "You keep telling me you can't stand the cold, and you spend all day playing in the snow?"

"Really, magelet, you've known me since the spring," he replied mildly. "Surely you've learned by now not to actually believe anything I say?"

_That's true, _Daine agreed privately. Her friend never seemed to take life too seriously until he absolutely had to. It made it very easy to underestimate him, she'd noticed. "Even so, you can barely talk for shivering," she pointed out.

"Because I've stopped running around like an idiot," he explained. "I'm fine as long as I keep moving. I don't like travelling in weather like this because I'm just sitting in the saddle getting colder and colder, and I don't like being inside somewhere that isn't heated. You're a mountain girl; what do they teach you about the cold?"

"To keep moving," she conceded, before smiling up at him. "And not to start snowball fights when nobody else is on your side."

"We're going to be having a long talk quite soon about your lack of support for me, magelet," he informed her in a lofty tone. "As my student you are expected, no, _required _to be on my side."

"Even if you don't deserve it?" Daine asked innocently, making him laugh.

"_Especially _then, because that's when I generally need all the help I can get. And don't be cheeky."

"I'm following my teacher's example," she shot back, and Numair raised an eyebrow, chuckling.

"You're mouthy today."

"I'm sorry."

"No, don't be. It's good to see you so happy. You deserve it."

Suddenly uncertain, she dropped her eyes. "Thank you for my gifts," she murmured shyly. She'd never had so many presents in her life; Numair's contributions had been a chain to replace the leather thong that had held her badger claw, and a book about dragons.

"My pleasure," he replied cheerfully, seeming to understand that he had embarrassed her and keeping his tone light. "Thank you for mine."

"It wasn't much..." It really hadn't been; just a small carved wooden horse whose expression had reminded her of Cloud, right down to the backward-slanting ears and the slightly speculative look the pony assumed right before biting someone. As the mare's favoured victim, she'd decided Numair should receive it.

"It didn't need to be," he replied instantly, cutting her off. "Sometimes it really is the thought that counts." He grinned. "It's standing on top of a pile of unfinished work so it can look at me reproachfully and threaten to bite me."

"You like it?"

"I do. It made me laugh, which at that time of the morning is very impressive. Everyone else's gifts got my usual growl and an attempt at a smile."

She smiled, well able to imagine it. Neither of them were morning people. "Good."

They had almost reached her room now; Numair paused and looked around at the snow in the twilight. "The end of another year," he said thoughtfully. "Has it been what you expected?"

"Definitely not!" she exclaimed softly, laughing.

He laughed with her. "No, it hits you like that, the first time. By this time next year you'll be as mad as the rest of us, and it will all seem quite normal. But you don't forget." His laughter fading, Numair smiled at her, his head slightly on one side in the thoughtful way he had. Reaching out, he hugged her affectionately, kissing the top of her head. "Midwinter luck, Daine."

Returning the smile, she stood on tiptoe, and still had to stretch to kiss his cheek. "Midwinter luck, Numair."

* * *

_Yes, I am aware that in reality everyone would be far too busy to spend a day decorating or playing in the snow. But why let the real world get in the way of a fluffy story? And it's actually Midwinter today, too. I'm good.  
_

_I'd like to wish all of you Happy Holidays, whichever one you happen to celebrate; I'm hoping to update again before January, but if I don't manage that I'd like to wish you all Happy New Year as well. Thanks for all your support and encouragement, and the best of luck with all your goals for the coming year._

**_Loten._**


	9. Discoveries

_**Discoveries**_

_**Summary: **__Numair finally starts to open up a little about his past. Daine's POV._

_**Timeline: **__Between Wolf-Speaker and Emperor Mage._

_**Genre: **__Friendship/Angst.  
_

_**Notes: **__In Emperor Mage, Daine recalls Numair telling her about being a street magician and nearly starving. We never get to see that conversation. So here's my version. Happy New Year, everyone. Important note at the end of the chapter; been a while since we had one of those.  


* * *

_

It had been an offhand comment from Alanna that started it. Nothing major, just an idle remark in the middle of a conversation about events that had happened before Daine had come to Tortall, about when Numair had first joined them. The phrase she used had caught Daine's attention – the Lioness had spoken of Numair's "being found," which seemed a strange choice of words. Curious, she asked her friend about it the next time they were alone – they were in his rooms and supposed to be in the middle of a lesson on the native animals of the Yamani Isles.

"I suppose it does sound a little strange, describing it that way," he agreed mildly. Hesitating, he looked at her for a moment before exhaling and closing the book they had been studying, apparently abandoning the lesson for today. "Has nobody mentioned the circumstances surrounding my arrival in Tortall?"

She shook her head, trying unsuccessfully to read his expression. "No."

"Well, the short version is that I was in hiding, and Alanna found me." The look in his eyes now was what Daine thought of as his 'Carthak expression', the closed, slightly tense look that accompanied anything that touched on his past. She knew enough of the story to guess that she would probably regret asking too many questions; it was the only subject he never willingly spoke of. Given that she had only shared her own past with him when she had no other choice, it was hard to push too much.

"You don't have to tell me," she said carefully. "It's not my business."

Numair shook his head and smiled at her. "I said a long time ago that someday I'd tell you the full story, magelet. Remember? When we were travelling with the trainee Riders, and you asked me why I never seemed to like talking about Carthak."

"I remember."

"Well, then." Pushing back his chair, he stretched his legs out in front of him and settled more comfortably, his eyes hooded as he considered his words. "You know that I had to flee Carthak when Ozorne named me traitor. It wasn't as simple as I implied... it's quite a long story. Do you remember my telling you in Dunlath how Tristan and his friends set themselves against me? Ozorne used to watch and laugh sometimes, but mostly he ignored it. When it was announced that I would be trying for the black robe, the bullying stopped; I think they were afraid of me, or they realised how much I was holding back. Even then, I could have killed them if I'd let myself. It was about then that Ozorne started taking an interest in me; he liked the idea of having a black robe as a friend, and I was so isolated that I didn't realise." He smiled crookedly, but it didn't reach his eyes; Daine hadn't seen him look so sombre in a long time.

"By then he was officially the imperial heir, and everyone followed his lead. If he had decided he didn't like me either, I doubt I would have survived the year. Students he disapproved of always seemed to end up leaving suddenly, although I didn't notice then. Tristan and the others were some of his... well, not his closest friends, he didn't have any. His closest followers, I suppose. They were there when I was arrested, which is another reason I hate them."

Daine frowned, confused for a moment. "Arrested? I knew you were accused of treason and had to leave, but..."

"I know. I probably should have told you before, but I didn't realise we were going to keep encountering Carthak. I wasn't a particularly clever man in those days; I suppose I was intelligent enough, but I knew nothing about people or politics and I didn't see the warning signs. I had no idea what was going to happen until Ozorne had me arrested; I woke up in the dungeons."

She drew in a sharp breath; he hadn't mentioned that before. "You told me you refused to do something the emperor asked..." she said hesitantly, her mind racing. Kitten, who until then had been listening silently in evident fascination, stirred uneasily and edged closer, her scales darkening a little.

"That's true. I... don't want to talk about that. Not today. I'm sorry. I trust you, Daine, but... this isn't easy for me." His dark eyes held shadows, and she reached out to touch his arm gently; he actually flinched when she did so, almost imperceptibly, before relaxing once more and shivering slightly.

"It's all right," she said quietly, drawing away again. They sat in silence for a few minutes before she asked cautiously, "How did you escape?" She didn't want to pry into bad memories, but at the same time she desperately wanted to know the full story, even if she regretted it later.

"By sheer luck, mostly," Numair replied laconically. "There are cells under the imperial palace specifically designed to hold mages; they cancel the Gift. But they were never built with black robes in mind, and couldn't cope with my strength. I honestly don't remember much about it; I had no idea what I was doing, and I wasn't in very good shape at the time. It's all a bit of a blur. My teacher helped me get away, and I made it to the harbour and onto a ship."

"To Tortall?"

He shook his head. "No. I tried to go home to Tyra. That was a mistake; somehow Ozorne knew the name of the town where I was born, although I never told him. I didn't have to. I didn't have anywhere else to go; it was easy to guess where I would be heading. There was a welcoming committee waiting for me when I got there." He shivered again, his expression turning darker. Obviously there was more to this story than he was telling her, but if it was worse than what he was describing at the moment she wasn't sure she wanted to hear it. There was real pain in his eyes. Kitten trilled softly, sounding concerned, and nudged his hand with her nose until he mechanically began stroking the dragonet.

"I got away," he continued hastily, "and I chose to come to Tortall. I didn't know much about it, but I could speak the language, and I knew they had abolished slavery, and it was a large country a long way from Carthak. That was all I really needed to know. I thought I would be able to hide; and I did, for a while. Has anyone else told you how I came to Corus?"

Daine shook her head. "No. Alanna said once that she'd known you the longest, but she wasn't specific."

"It was by accident, in the end. I certainly never intended to go anywhere near the capital. I could have done, of course; it probably would have made more sense to go straight to the palace and ask for sanctuary, but I didn't know that at the time. I knew nothing about Tortall, and trying something like that in Carthak would have been a disaster. I was a wanted criminal; I needed to hide. So I took to the streets and became a juggler."

"_What?_" She stared at him in disbelief. Of all the things she'd occasionally imagined from what she knew of his past, she had never considered that. It was so unexpected that she barely stopped herself from gaping at him.

"Not what you were expecting?" he asked lightly, with another crooked smile that didn't touch his eyes. "I suppose it does seem a little strange. But it took me less than a day to realise that nobody notices street people, the beggars and performers. Nobody looks at their faces, and that was important to me. I already knew how to juggle, and a few sleight of hand tricks; it was a hobby of mine. More importantly, it was a hobby that nobody else knew about. And a mage playing at being a street magician was nicely ironic, don't you think? I didn't dare use my Gift, of course, but I didn't need it. I was pretty good; just not good enough."

"Why, what happened?" she asked faintly. It was certainly true that he was very good at juggling, and right back when they had first met she remembered thinking that it was a bit of an odd hobby for a mage.

"Winter, for a start," her friend said, laughing softly. "It was early spring when I left Carthak, just before my twenty first birthday. That was a mild year in Tortall, although I didn't know it at the time. I was all right through the summer, and most of the autumn, but then it started to get really cold. Tyra and Carthak are both very hot countries; nothing could have prepared me for a Tortallan winter. I'd never even seen snow before. I was sleeping rough; I could generally make enough money for either food or shelter, but not both. I almost froze to death. After that, I spent every coin I earned just trying to stay warm, so I never really had enough to eat. To make a long story short, I was dying of starvation when Alanna finally caught up with me."

His matter-of-fact tone somehow only made it worse. Daine had spent her life in the mountains; she knew how bitter a northern winter could be. The thought of being homeless, friendless, alone and scared in such hostile conditions was heartbreaking, and he spoke of it so casually, dismissing what must have been a terrible experience in a few short sentences. _I suppose that explains why he hates the cold so much... _she thought almost hysterically, swallowing. She stared at him in silence for a long time before saying softly, "I'm sorry," and reaching to take his hand. Kitten's scales had darkened almost to black.

Smiling, Numair squeezed her fingers gently. "Don't be. I'm not. In hindsight, it was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. She had been after me for a long time; I had been trying to hide my Gift, but not well enough. By that time she and Jon were fairly sure that I was in Tortall; Ozorne had sent my name and description to every country in the Eastern Lands to try and find me. I'd seen her a few times in some of the towns I travelled through; the Lioness isn't easy to miss, after all," he added dryly. "When I realised she was following me, I panicked, but I was half dead by then. That was probably just as well; it meant she could stop me doing anything stupid and make me listen to her. It took her a long time, but she finally convinced me to go with her to Corus and talk to the king, and here I am."

After quite a long silence, during which he absently traced her knuckles with his thumb and stared at nothing, he took a breath and let go of her hand, his voice brisk. "And now, magelet, back to work." He picked up the book once more and opened it to the right page, and the lesson continued.

* * *

_This wasn't the story I intended to write for this update. I planned a quite different one set a bit later in the series, after Emperor Mage. Then I realised that this one needs to come first. Numair's not telling the full story yet, as you can see. Also, given how much I cheerfully torture Numair on a regular basis, I actually find it quite difficult to write good angst for him for some strange reason. Anyway, nominations have closed for the Knighthood of Ficship contest and VOTING HAS OPENED. _

_This is the important note! Voting is open until February 1st; please, please, please could you all go to _forum dot fanfiction dot net /topic/54838/16385347/1/ _and vote for Divine Intervention and Lost & Found?_

_I have voting incentives for you this time. If either of my stories make it to third place or higher, you'll get some romantically fluffy DN smut. If one of my stories wins, you'll get to vote for whose point of view it's written from. And if I do well in the contest it will spur me to start work on the post-ROTG stories, and that means more fluff. But if you want to see any of this happen, you'd better go and vote!  
_

_**Loten.**_


	10. Nightmares, Redux

_**Nightmares Redux**_

_**Summary: **__Numair's turn to have bad dreams, and he opens up a little more. Daine's POV.  
_

_**Timeline: **__Shortly after Emperor Mage.  
_

_**Genre: **__Friendship/Angst.  
_

_**Notes: **__This is the one I planned to update with last time, until I realised that 'Discoveries' had to come first. I did promise a reverse of Nightmares a while ago.  
_

* * *

Daine was growing increasingly worried about her friend. Since returning from Carthak, Numair had been very quiet. Their first week back had been bad, when everything had caught up with them both; she admitted he _probably _hadn't deserved some of the things she'd said to him, but he hadn't exactly behaved well either. That had been sorted out now, with shamefaced apologies on both sides, but he was far from his usual self these days. He spent most of his time on his own, shut up in his rooms, or sometimes wandering aimlessly through the more remote areas of the palace grounds; when he was around the others, he seldom spoke, lost in his own thoughts. The dark circles under his eyes strongly suggested that he was still plagued by nightmares, too.

Not that she could blame him. Her own dreams hadn't been pleasant, and she didn't have the history that Numair did. She very much doubted that he would ever truly recover from what had happened in Carthak, on either occasion. He wouldn't talk about it, but she could guess how terrified he had been for her, from the few things he _had _said.

That was driven home to her the first time they travelled after returning; Numair spent the first night tossing restlessly and muttering to himself, _all _night, and refused to sleep the second night. On the third night, she jolted awake when he started screaming. Really screaming, a horrifying sound she had never heard him make before but that sounded uncannily similar to the way Ozorne had made the little illusion scream.

As her animal friends fled in all directions and Kitten burrowed under the blankets, Daine stared at her friend; he was apparently still asleep, but his eyes were half-open and moving rapidly from side to side and he was twitching and jerking almost convulsively. Even as she watched, he arched his back, his head tilting to expose his throat, and screamed again; the raw terror and fury and agony in the sound hurt to hear.

She glanced at the horses. Cloud had backed away with her ears flattened against her skull, clearly not liking the sounds the mage was making; Spots, on the other hand, seemed merely resigned as he regarded his master sadly. Evidently the gelding wasn't surprised.

"Should I wake him?" she asked hesitantly.

–_Just stop him doing that,_– Cloud snapped.

"Spots?"

–_If you can,_– the piebald said softly. –_Be careful. He doesn't always know where he is when he wakes from these dreams._–

Worried now, Daine cautiously moved closer, wincing as he screamed raggedly once more. She had seen Numair have bad dreams before; usually they weren't much. He was restless, fidgeting a lot in his sleep, and sometimes muttered to himself in languages she didn't know. She had never seen him like this before. "Numair?" she called softly. "Numair! Numair, wake up."

He jerked awake with a gasp and a yell, and it was just as well that Spots had warned her; from the wide-eyed, disorientated look on his face as he stared around him, if she had been bending over him when he woke he would have hit her – or worse. It took a moment before he was able to focus on her. "Oh, it's you," he commented hoarsely, looking almost relieved as he sat up slowly. "Is something wrong?"

"I should be asking you that," she retorted shakily. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," he replied automatically, his eyes sliding away from hers. "Why?"

She looked down. "You... you were screaming."

"I was?" She nodded, glancing at him uneasily. "It was just a bad dream."

"I gathered that much. But I've seen you have nightmares before, and you've never screamed."

"Was I saying anything, or just screaming?" he asked uncertainly.

"I don't know. I couldn't understand a word."

"It was probably Thak." He sighed. "Hardly surprising, I suppose. That... wasn't pleasant."

"What did you dream about?" she asked softly. Numair hesitated for a long moment, frowning and looking as though he was struggling with something; finally he seemed to come to a decision.

"Those damned dungeons again. I've been having flashbacks for months, almost since Jon told me I was going back, reliving what happened to me. This time was worse; I was watching it happen to _you_, instead," he said bluntly, starting to shiver and drawing his knees up to his chin, folding in on himself.

"Flashbacks to what?" she asked uncertainly, reviewing what she knew of what had happened to him. She had always known he wasn't telling her everything, but... "Your arrest?"

"No. The aftermath." Numair ran his fingers through his sweat-damp hair and sighed again, staring at nothing; his eyes were as dark as she had ever seen them, and close to haunted. "I never did tell you the full truth. I wasn't just arrested, I was tortured. For days. That's why I don't really remember how I escaped. I was... very badly hurt."

Daine stared at him in shocked silence for a while, trying to keep the horror from her face. He smiled crookedly at her, an almost bitter expression. "Surprised, Daine? Don't tell me you expected better of Ozorne?" he asked sardonically. She shook her head jerkily and swallowed hard, unsure of what to say.

Finally she asked softly, "Does anyone else know?"

"Lindhall does; he helped me get away afterwards, he treated the worst injuries before I left. As for the others, I don't know. I haven't told them. Alanna probably does, I suppose... I still had visible scars when she found me – she had to help rebreak and heal a couple of my fingers where the bones hadn't knit properly, actually – and I had nightmares sometimes. If she knows, George probably does too, and maybe some of the others, but nobody's ever mentioned it. I really don't talk about Carthak to anyone. Except you," he added as an afterthought.

"I can't believe you've never said anything."

"It wasn't important."

"It wasn't – Numair!" she exclaimed. Hearing this was bad enough, but... he didn't think it was _important _that he'd been imprisoned and tortured?

"I'm serious. It was a long time ago. I got over it, more or less. If Jon hadn't sent me back to Carthak, I would have happily lived the rest of my life barely thinking about it, with nothing more than the odd nightmare." He looked up at her. "I tried to leave my past behind when I changed my name. I didn't want it to affect me any more than was unavoidable. In the end, it was just pain. I can deal with that. It was the... the betrayal that hurt more. The physical pain really wasn't important."

She thought about this for a while, watching him. He was looking at her as though he was worried about her reaction; the uncertainty in his eyes jarred against the image of her friend, who was usually so confident. "What are you thinking?" he asked quietly.

"Actually, I was thinking that it explained a lot," Daine said slowly, biting her lip as more pieces began to fall into place. "How you were acting, in Carthak. I knew you were afraid that something bad would happen, but I didn't realise how serious it was. And after I... was drugged. I saw you, you know. Visions, I suppose."

"Dreamrose. Kaddar said you knew I was still in the city. Although you should have known that anyway," he added awkwardly. "I wouldn't have left you. You know that."

She almost smiled. "I know. Anyway, I saw how angry you were, how..." She hesitated, looking for a word, and he smiled crookedly.

"Desperate?"

"Yes, I s'pose. I guess I know why, now."

Numair nodded slowly. "I knew you'd be in the cells, so that I couldn't find you, but I didn't know what was happening. I kept telling myself that if you were hurt the animals would react, but it didn't help. I kept imagining... what might be happening to you, what Ozorne might do." He shuddered violently, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath before swallowing. When he looked at her again, she suddenly realised what he had been afraid would happen, and cold slid down her spine; she hadn't even considered that. She hadn't really believed that Ozorne would harm her at all, let alone... but from the look in Numair's eyes, he had been prepared for the worst. Possibly with good reason.

"And... when we met. Sinthya. He... he tortured you, didn't he?" she asked hesitantly. Nobody had really seemed to pay that much attention. Various people had told him he was an idiot to have risked shape shifting and nearly killing himself, and there had been some discussion of the best therapies to help mend his broken arm, but nobody had really talked about what had actually happened to him, at least not to her knowledge. Now she could understand why he had apparently made an elementary mistake; he'd panicked.

"Hah. Sinthya was an amateur," he replied bitterly, before shrugging. "But yes, he did, a little. He didn't really get started before I shifted, though. He wasn't smart enough to have a cell that would hold a mage; the drugs weren't quite enough."

"I can't believe you're so calm about it."

"Again, it was a long time ago. And Sinthya didn't really hurt me. It was just a broken arm; I've had worse injuries falling off a horse," he added ruefully. "It would have been different if I hadn't escaped, but I did. And if it hadn't happened, I wouldn't have met you, not properly. You'd have just been Onua's new assistant; I doubt we'd have even spoken."

"I wasn't just talking about Sinthya. The way you said it... Ozorne almost killed you."

"Yes," he admitted quietly. "I almost lost the sight in one eye, and it's a miracle Lindhall managed to heal the damage done to my leg. It took years for the scars to fade. A couple of the worst ones are probably still there."

"But you're just sitting here talking about it as though it was nothing."

Numair sighed. "Hardly that. It changed my entire life and forced me to become a completely different person. Ozorne brought me to the lowest point I have ever been, and I had to do some terrible things to escape. The psychological effects probably still haven't faded entirely. But what's the good in dwelling on it? It's over. I'm never going back to Carthak again – I don't care what the circumstances are, I know I can't face it again, not for any reason. The panic attacks have stopped. The nightmares will stop eventually. In a way, this wasn't as bad as it was then; it didn't take me by surprise this time. I couldn't think any less of Ozorne than I already did. Neither of us were hurt; that's more important than injuries I received almost a decade ago. Of course it affected me; of course it still bothers me. That doesn't mean I have to make it a priority."

"So why are you telling me now?"

"Because you asked me," he replied matter-of-factly. "And because you got caught up in it. You have a right to know, if anyone does." After a moment he rolled over and pushed himself to all fours, crawling out of his bedroll.

"You're getting up?"

"Briefly." Not looking at her, he added, "No, Daine, don't follow me. I'm going to be sick, and I don't want an audience." Standing, he walked into the trees quickly.

–_He's right, don't follow him,_– Spots said quietly when she began to stand up. –_He won't want you seeing him like that._–

"I've seen him be sick before," she argued softly – she had, too, the first time she'd seen him kill men with his Gift. She remembered his quiet, embarrassed confession that he often threw up after anything like that. It had been her first appreciation of the bitter irony of Numair's existence – that the gentlest man she'd ever met should have been fated to be such a powerful war mage.

–_He's not just being sick,_– the horse replied, watching the trees where his master had gone. –_He's crying._–

"...Really?" Daine managed after a moment's startled silence. She'd seen the best and the worst of Numair, spending most of every day with him as she did and experiencing some truly strange occurrences; they'd been right through the spectrum, but never once had she seen him cry.

–_He does, sometimes,_– the gelding explained. –_Not often. And not for a long time. He's as good as one of the People at forgetting bad things, but what happened over there... It's brought it back to him._–

There didn't seem to be anything else to say in response to that. Numair was obviously shaken by whatever had been in his dreams (and whatever it had been, she hoped it hadn't been as bad as her imagination was currently suggesting); aside from anything else, he hadn't called her 'magelet' once during the conversation, which was always a bad sign. "Will he be all right?"

–_Yes. In time._–

"What do you think I should do? You've known him longer'n I have."

–_He's talking about it. He's never done that before. I didn't know why he had those dreams either._– It took Daine a moment to understand the odd tone in the gelding's voice; Spots was possibly the calmest horse she had ever met, but he was also fiercely loyal to Numair, and right now he was furious because of what had happened to his master, angrier than any stallion in battle rage. Not for the first time, it occurred to her that horse and rider were surprisingly alike in some ways. –_I think he just needs time to let go of it again._–

Nodding, the girl returned to her blankets, shivering as Kitten crept into her lap with an unhappy sound. She felt oddly off balance; this was a side of Numair she had only ever seen as a brief shadow in his eyes before. Now she understood the reasons that shadow was there, and why he never talked about his past. She also understood why he had fought so desperately not to return to Carthak, why he'd begged Jon on his knees not to make him go. She had thought at the time that he was overreacting, thoughts she now felt horribly guilty about. As an aside, she also understood why he'd forgotten to tell her his plan to fake his own death; clearly he had had good reason for being so distracted. He had not behaved well in Carthak, but it was hardly surprising under the circumstances, and she felt doubly guilty about giving him such a hard time about it once they had got home.

After a few minutes she moved to the fire and took her flint and steel from her pack to relight it, remembering Numair's actions whenever she had suffered from nightmares. She knew he wouldn't let her offer any more comfort than this; he'd drawn away from her once more, and would attempt to pretend it hadn't happened. The fact that he had opened up as much as he had was surprising; it was touching to think that she was the only person he had told this to.

When he returned to the camp some time later, Daine studied his face from the corner of her eye, trying not to let him see. He looked surprisingly composed given the circumstances, although when she looked closer his eyes were bloodshot and the skin beneath them slightly puffy. He cocked his head to one side when he saw the fire, looking at it for a moment before looking at her; a very slight smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, and although it was a faint shadow of his usual smile she felt heartened to see it. Evidently he understood the gesture and appreciated it.

Kitten went to the mage as he sat down, giving him no chance to protest as she scrambled into his lap and insistently shoved her muzzle under his chin; after a moment Numair chuckled roughly and hugged the dragonet before firmly putting her down and nudging her over towards Daine once more.

"Are you all right?" the girl asked softly.

"I will be," he replied quietly; his voice was hoarse, but he didn't sound too bad. She watched him settling down once more – he always slept on his right side, facing the fire, curled up loosely in his blankets rather than stretched out.

"Numair?"

"Yes?"

"Why... why did you go back?" When he didn't answer immediately, she continued softly, "Jon told us how desperate you were not to go. After what you told me... if it'd been me, I'd still be running. Why did you go back?"

"Lots of reasons," he said softly after a moment's silence. Fidgeting, he pillowed his head on one arm, eyes half-closed as he stared into the flames. "Partly, of course, because Jon ordered me to – I know I joke around and make a show of arguing, but he _is _my king, and I usually do what he says. And Ozorne had asked for me specifically, and could have claimed insult if I hadn't gone; it wouldn't have been enough to start a war, or anything, but it would have made the diplomatic situation much more difficult."

Daine looked at him steadily; she knew her friend better than that, after all this time. "And the real reason?"

He half-smiled, looking at her past the fire. "There was no one reason. I wanted to see Lindhall again, for one. And I was curious to see how the university had changed. Mostly I wanted to see if I could; I think I was trying to prove to myself that I wasn't scared of him any more." After a moment Numair lifted his head to meet her eyes, and smiled properly. "And, of course, I was being my usual annoying and overprotective self. I think I gave in the moment Jon mentioned that you were going, magelet – I wanted to keep an eye on you."

Relieved to hear the familiar nickname and see him smile again, she smiled back at him. "Well, you messed that one up."

"I did, rather, didn't I," he agreed. "You never know – one of these days I might actually believe that you can look after yourself."

"Will you ever believe that you can't solve everything?" she asked affectionately.

"Never."

He settled down once more and closed his eyes, looking much more like his usual self, and stifled a yawn. Smiling at him, she made herself comfortable as the fire began to die down, hoping that she would be able to sleep after what she had learned.

"Daine?" he asked sleepily.

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

"What for?" she asked, bemused. He didn't answer; when she looked at him, she found that he was asleep.

* * *

_This is... nothing like the story I intended to write. For a start, it was originally from Numair's point of view, and a great deal shorter. Then I added a part from Daine's point of view. Then the horses sneaked in (they keep doing that, especially Spots) and I rewrote what I already had to change it to Daine's point of view entirely. Then it all kind of snowballed, and this is what I ended up with. I'm pretty pleased with it; it was just rather unexpected._

_Daine doesn't have anywhere near as much of an inner monologue as Numair does, when I write them. On the whole, I prefer writing Numair, even when he babbles to himself endlessly, but for some scenes – like this one, apparently – Daine's perspective works better._

_And she's right – nobody seemed to take much notice of what Sinthya did to him. Charming. She's also right about the irony of his magic – he's a slightly shy geek, who likes animals and pretty women and obscure knowledge, and he has to kill things for a living. Seems fair strange, that, as Daine would say. Unfair, too._

_I think this is the last angsty story for a while. Voting is still open for the Knighthood of Ficship contest, so if you haven't voted yet, please do (full details on my profile). Thanks. As always, please review.  
_

_**Loten.**_


	11. Dancing

_**Dancing**_

_**Summary: **__Onua keeps insisting that Daine needs to know how to dance. That means more lessons. Daine's POV.  
_

_**Timeline: **__Shortly after Wild Magic._

_**Genre: **Humour/General  
_

_**Notes: **I'm not really sure where this came from, specifically. But Daine is at this point basically an untutored commoner; there's a lot she has to learn if she's to be part of the court. There will be a couple of other stories on this theme, I think.  
_

* * *

"Well, Daine, I promised I'd teach you to dance," Onua said brightly, looking around the door of the girl's room. "I've found someone to help, too."

"Who?" Daine asked suspiciously, and stared in some dismay as Numair nudged the door open with his foot. He raised an eyebrow.

"The expression on your face isn't exactly a flattering welcome, magelet," he noted mildly.

"I thought he'd be a less embarrassing option than any of the other men you know," Onua explained.

"Jon, for example," Numair murmured, not quite under his breath, smothering a grin. Daine felt her face turn scarlet, and it was no comfort at all to see Onua kick the mage hard enough to make him yelp.

"Don't tease," the K'mir ordered as he rubbed his shin. "You promised to behave yourself."

"Remind me again why I allowed you to talk me into this?" he asked.

"Because despite appearances, and despite your efforts to convince us all otherwise, you're actually a nice man underneath your feeble attempts at wit," she told him. "And because if you don't, I'll tell Alanna, Thayet and Buri that you refused, and the four of us will see to it that your life becomes a living hell."

"You already do," he retorted, glancing sideways at Daine and winking. She couldn't help but smile, still not entirely used to apparently quite powerful and important adults acting like children.

"You're a _lot _taller than me," she said slowly, looking up at him – in fact, he was more than a foot taller.

He grinned. "True, but I'm a lot taller than all my female friends," he pointed out. "It is possible for us to dance with one another. I do get backache sometimes having to bend down so far..." he added mischievously, managing to dodge Onua's boot this time. "What?" he protested, laughing. "It's hardly my fault all my friends are short!"

"Has it ever occurred to you that as we're all more or less the same height, we're normal, making you the anomaly in our little group?" Onua asked in a deceptively mild tone.

"Sarge is taller than I am," he said indignantly.

"By one entire inch. He's from a tall people. And he's built as if he's _supposed _to be tall. You just look like you were in some kind of freakish accident when you were younger, or have a serious thyroid problem."

"That's charming, that is," he groused, but Daine could see her friend's point. She had thought when she'd first met Numair – in his human shape, anyway – that he still had the lanky build of an adolescent just finishing a growth spurt. There was muscle there, but he _did _look as if his height was an accident, balanced only slightly by the breadth of his shoulders. Cloud's slightly unkind nickname of 'stork-man' had well and truly stuck; fortunately, Numair didn't know about it. She hoped he never would.

"Stop whining," Onua told him brutally, before turning to Daine and smiling. "Ignore him. The rest of us do. Now, to business. Do you know any formal dances at all?"

"No."

"All right. We'll start with the simpler ones. Numair and I will show you first, then he'll partner you and take you through the steps. And he'll keep his mouth shut, or I'll gag him."

"You can't reach," Numair pointed out mischievously, and held up his hands when she glared at him. "All right, I surrender. I'll behave. I'd just like to remind you that I'm doing you both a favour here."

"You'd only be buried in a book otherwise," Onua retorted. "You'll give yourself eye strain."

He rolled his eyes good naturedly and grinned at Daine. "You can stop smiling like that, magelet. You're supposed to be on my side." He moved into the middle of the room. "Relax, Daine," he added, slightly more seriously. "This is easy. It won't hurt, and it might even be fun."

And it was, in a way. Once they actually got started, Numair behaved himself and stopped joking around, dropping back into his teaching persona as he patiently helped guide her through the steps. Daine was certain she would never have the courage to dance in public, but she supposed it was nice to know how, not that it seemed likely she would ever need to know. Whatever anyone said, she was just a girl who was good with horses, who helped the trainee Riders. If both Numair and Onua had been hinting at something else, well, her friends were quite clearly half mad, and as for the other grand folk she'd met, they'd forget about her soon enough, surely...

* * *

_Ah, Daine, if you only knew. And before anyone asks, yes, eventually Numair is going to find out what Cloud and all the other animals call him, but I haven't written it yet. No Kitten in this one, but she's proving quite tricky to write. I need to work on that. I know nothing about formal dancing, by the way, which is why I didn't go into any detail. Only a few days left to vote, if you haven't already done so. As always, read and review, and many thanks for all your feedback._

**_Loten._**


	12. Awkward

_**Awkward**_

_**Summary: **__Daine hasn't had much experience of men; knowing the facts of life doesn't help. Embarrassing conversations are inevitable.  
_

_**Timeline: **__Just after Wild Magic  
_

_**Genre: **__Humour.  
_

_**Notes: **__It's been a while since I've had the chance to torment Numair. This is only a short update, I'm afraid, not much more than a drabble. I've got heavily into my incomplete Harry Potter fic at the moment and it's made it hard to concentrate on any other fandoms. The deadline has passed for voting in the Knighthood of Ficship contest, but I haven't heard whether my stories made it into the final or not. You'll know when I do. Thanks to all who voted.  


* * *

_

Daine had eventually grown used to being allowed to wander into Numair's rooms whenever she wanted, although she tried not to do so too often in case she was interrupting something. He had never made her feel like a nuisance, but surely it was only a matter of time. On this occasion she did actually need to talk to him, and given that it was the middle of the night it was a little strange that he wasn't in his rooms. Luckily it wasn't an emergency, but she was still curious enough to challenge him when she finally tracked him down the next day.

"Where were you last night?"

"Hmm?" he replied vaguely, looking up from his breakfast; she recognised the look in his eyes and realised that he wasn't quite awake yet. Smiling slightly, she repeated the question.

"I wanted to ask you about trimming Kitten's claws, but you weren't home."

"Oh." To her surprise he looked away, avoiding her eyes and clearing his throat. "No. I was... elsewhere."

Frowning, Daine studied her friend's profile, and blinked; _he looks embarrassed. _Abruptly she realised what he was implying, and felt herself blush scarlet. "Oh." Although why it should be such a surprise, she wasn't sure; she had only known her teacher for a couple of months, but she had noticed how much attention he tended to attract from women, and both Alanna and Onua frequently teased him for being a flirt; you'd have to be blind and deaf not to hear of Master Salmalín's reputation in certain areas. Fighting down her blush, she said carefully, "Maybe you should change your wards..."

"Why?" he asked blankly, apparently not awake enough to follow the change of subject.

Now acutely embarrassed, she tried to explain. "Well, surely you don't want me to, um, walk in on... anything."

To her frank amazement, he actually blushed, the first time she had ever seen him do so. "You won't," he said awkwardly, staring at his food. "I don't – ah, entertain in my rooms." After a moment he added hastily, "Trimming Kitten's claws, you said?" and she followed the change of topic with relief.

* * *

Awkward and embarrassing as that conversation had been, it was _nothing _compared to the one that took place a week or so later, when Numair found himself having to explain very carefully and very delicately that when they were out on the road she should let him be for a few minutes after he woke up and allow him to get up in his own time. That would have been bad enough all by itself, but Daine was still very much an innocent and in the end he was forced to be fairly blunt before she understood what he meant. She hadn't been able to meet his eyes for three days after _that_ particular lesson. Being male did present problems occasionally.

* * *

_I couldn't resist. Daine's thirteen and the only human male in her life to date was her grandfather; clearly there's a lot she doesn't know about what younger men can be like. I assume Numair tends to go to women rather than bring women home with him, for several reasons - one, most men who sleep around have issues and tend to want to keep that part of their life separate from the rest, and two, he lives in the teacher's wing - or at least, he does by Protector of the Small - and it might be a little awkward if the kiddies saw women sneaking in and out. _

_As for that last paragraph, if anyone missed the point I was making you should be proud of not having a dirty mind - but Numair's young and male, and inevitably he's going to wake up in a certain state. Which when you're travelling with an adolescent girl must be really, really embarrassing for both of them, and really amusing for everyone else. Daine's the daughter of a midwife and knows the facts of life (there might be another story on that theme later) but there's still a lot she doesn't know. I've got a couple of stories planned on similar themes, but I'm not really in a Tortallan frame of mind at the moment, so bear with me._

_I'll keep my promise, though - if I do well in the competition, I'll write you some fluff. Patience, friends.  
_

_**Loten.**_


	13. Beltane

_**Beltane**_

_**Summary: **__Daine's first Beltane. Numair's POV.  
_

_**Timeline: **__Between Wild Magic and Wolf-Speaker.  
_

_**Genre: **__General. A bit of humour, maybe some platonic fluff if you squint.  
_

_**Notes: **__Divine Intervention and Lost & Found both made it to the finals! Thank you very much to everyone who voted. The judges' results come out on March 1st. I wanted to have some post-RotG romantic fluff for you today, but it's not finished yet, so have this instead.  
_

* * *

Numair eventually managed to track Daine down after about an hour, when things were starting to grow quieter around the bonfires. She was sitting quietly with Kitten, looking tired but happy enough, and she smiled to see him. "Hello. I wondered where you were."

"Sorry, magelet," he said cheerfully. "I got caught by Raoul; he was desperate for company that wouldn't tease him for not having company, if that makes sense."

"Just about. I'm surprised _you _don't have company."

He made a face, dropping to sit next to her and shoving her with his hip until she moved over. "You know, I think I preferred it when you were too shy to poke fun at my personal life. Alanna's been a dreadful influence."

"I'll tell her you said that," she threatened, and he grinned.

"Exactly my point. And don't bother, I tell her myself quite frequently. In any case, you're not likely to see her for a while, since George is visiting for the festival."

"That bad?"

"Worse," he said wryly. "Soon everyone will jump the fire – if you're lucky, someone will misjudge it and set their clothes alight. Lord Martin's wife did that, my second Beltane in Tortall, and I nearly passed out because I couldn't stop laughing long enough to breathe." It was definitely one of his better memories.

"Who's Lord Martin?" she asked. "I don't think I've met him."

"You'd remember if you had. He's a miserable old stick who disapproves of everyone and everything. Anyway, once everyone's done their jump, people are going to start disappearing rather quickly until all that's left are a few hopelessly hopeful single men who will then proceed to get very drunk. The fun part is tomorrow morning."

"Why?" Daine asked suspiciously.

He grinned. "Get to breakfast early; I'll meet you. We can sit and watch everyone straggling in, wearing the same clothes they're wearing tonight and looking somewhat the worse for wear, with grass stains in... interesting places. Definitely worth watching, if only because it's one of the three times a year you're likely to see the Lioness blush."

She smothered a giggle. "You're terrible. Seems like _you're _the bad influence."

"Who, me?" he asked innocently, widening his eyes at her and making her laugh. They'd known one another for almost a year now; she definitely knew better than to believe his innocent look.

"Yes. Anyway, won't you be one of the hopeless drunks?"

"Ouch," he replied, theatrically laying a hand over his heart.

"Sorry."

Numair grinned at her and adopted a lofty tone. "For your information, magelet, I will not. I am free tonight through my own choice, I'll have you know."

"Are you ill?" she asked tartly, and he laughed softly. _You really don't have a very high opinion of me. I must ask Alanna to tone it down a little; I'm not _that _bad._

"No. But thank you for your concern," he added sarcastically. "No, I'm always on my own at Beltane."

"Why?" she asked curiously.

"Have you ever heard the phrase 'greenwood marriage'?"

"No."

"Well, it used to be a custom in certain parts of the world," he explained. "If a couple were courting and weren't sure whether they were suited, they would have a greenwood marriage. Essentially, they would spend Beltane night out in the woods, and then live together as man and wife for a year and a day. After that, they could wed properly, or they could separate and go on about their lives as though nothing had happened."

Daine processed this thoughtfully. "And that's why you don't spend Beltane with anyone?" she asked, giving him a look that was a familiar mix of disapproval and laughter. "That's – what's the word Onua used?"

He groaned. "She hasn't given you the 'fear of commitment' speech?" Shaking his head wryly, he smiled. "She's a little biased when it comes to men in general. I swear I'm not that bad. I just don't want anyone to get the wrong impression and think I'm promising anything, and it's only one reason anyway."

"What's the other reason?" she asked, and he bit his tongue. _I didn't mean to say that._

Numair considered for a moment, trying to keep his grin in place, but he'd already let it slip. Besides, he didn't really want Daine to think he was just a shameless cad – _although I suppose I am, aren't I?_ Sighing, he surrendered to the oddly wistful mood that Beltane always brought out in him. "It just seems... false."

She twisted to look at him, her smile fading as she recognised the more serious note. "False, how?"

"I don't really know. I can't explain it very well. But... look over there, at Jon and Thayet. Or at Alanna and George." The two of them watched the couples in question for a few moments before Daine looked back at him inquiringly, and he tried to explain. "_That's _what Beltane is about. I just... feel like it should mean more than a drunken rut in the woods."

"That's... fair sweet of you," she said slowly, looking surprised and thoughtful.

He scowled, prepared to blame his flush on the heat from the bonfire. "Nobody will ever believe you if you repeat it." Usually he kept his romantic streak very deeply buried and tried to pretend it didn't exist.

"I won't," she said quietly, looking distant. Numair blinked down at her, puzzled by the change of mood, before cursing softly under his breath when he realised what he'd said.

"I'm sorry, Daine. I didn't think."

"It's all right." To his relief, she smiled at him. "I don't mind about it, not really. And it wouldn't have been a – a drunken rut," she added, blushing slightly. "Ma wasn't like that, no matter what folks said. There... there were men, sometimes, but not – they always meant _something. _Whoever my Da was, she knew what she was doing."

"I'm sure she did," he replied quietly, resting a hand on her shoulder and squeezing gently in silent apology. He wondered if Daine would ever learn who her father was; with her mother dead, it wasn't very likely. If the man knew he had a child, he had chosen not to acknowledge her, and if he didn't know then he never would. _His loss, _he decided finally, and dragged his grin back into place. "They're about to start. Come on, magelet, let's make sure we get a good view – I keep hoping this will be the year Jon makes a fool of himself." Standing, he offered her a hand, and she grinned back at him as she took it and stood up.

* * *

_I missed writing purely from Numair's point of view. I quite like this - Numair's not completely stupid and he does know he's a very bad man; he does - occasionally - feel a bit ashamed of himself. Not that it stops him, mind. And hey, everyone's a bit of a closet romantic at heart._

_It's Valentine's Day today and Beltane's actually in April, but oh well, close enough. To everyone with a Numair of their own - lucky so-and-so, make sure he's a good boy. To everyone else, **Daine-Weirynsra **might have one we can share, and she knows exactly what I mean!__  
_

_**Loten.**_


	14. Horse Sense

_**Horse Sense  
**_

_**Summary: **__Animals are a lot smarter than even the Wildmage gives them credit for, sometimes.  
_

_**Timeline: **__Shortly after Emperor Mage and into the beginning of Realms of the Gods._

_**Genre: **Humour  
_

_**Notes: **I'm still not in a conventional Tortallan frame of mind; I've got a rough draft of the first post-RotG story in development, but it's annoying me because I can't quite get it right. Give me time; I promise I haven't forgotten. In the meantime, have the result of a rabid plot-bunny that bit me when I was in the car a couple of days ago - one of the stranger stories in this collection, I suspect.  
_

* * *

_What's wrong with you? _Cloud asked her companion as the horses trotted along. Both their riders were lost in their own thoughts; that was normal at this time of the morning, but it was unusual for Spots to be so silent. The horses usually enjoyed gossiping idly throughout the early hours of a journey.

_I'm thinking, _the gelding replied unhelpfully. Both of them liked being more intelligent through exposure to Daine's magic, but the side effect of that was that there was a lot more to think about, and not all of it made sense.

_About what?_

_Our herd. Something's changed. Can't you feel it?_

The pony considered for a few moments, flicking an ear. _It's just what happened to them in that other place, _she said finally. _They've both been strange since they came back. They both have nightmares, too._

_No. It's more than that. He's had bad dreams since I've been with him. _Spots almost never used his master's name, and he was the only one of the People not to use the nickname 'stork-man'. _This is different._

_What do you think it is, then? _For all Cloud's attitude, she genuinely respected her friend's thoughts. She had been exposed to Daine more deeply and for longer, and was possibly more intelligent than Spots, but he was more sensitive to his rider's moods and was adept at reading other two-leggers.

_I don't know, _the piebald replied slowly. _It really scared him, being back there. He's different. Quieter. But that's not it either._

_You're making about as much sense as he does, _she retorted, and he snorted softly in response, his thoughts tinged with amusement.

_It's a two-legger thing, I think. But he feels different. I think she does, too?_

_Maybe, _the grey admitted grudgingly. Their riders were certainly acting differently. They were quieter, as Spots had said, less prone to idle conversation; more thoughtful, perhaps. The way they acted towards one another hadn't outwardly changed, but to one of the People it _felt _different. _What do you think it is?_

She sensed the gelding's hesitation. Whatever Spots thought, he wasn't sure about it. Finally he said very quietly, _I think perhaps he sees her differently now. He thought she would die, back in that place. It frightened him. Even now, you can smell his fear. I've never known him so afraid of anything._

Cloud blew out a breath through her nose. _So the stork-man has finally realised what his herd means to him. So what?_

Spots gave her a look of rebuke at the nickname, but didn't comment. He flicked an ear uneasily. _It's not just fear I can smell. He doesn't see her as just a herd-friend now. I think he wants to be her mate._

The pony almost whinnied in shock, barely restraining herself. _No, _she said with certainty. _He's had a whole string of mates. He doesn't look at his herd that way. And she's been fully grown for more than a season; he's never wanted to mate with her before._

_I didn't say he just wanted to mate with her, _Spots corrected. _He wants to be her mate. _There was a subtle but important difference. The gelding switched his tail, looking thoughtful. _You don't know him as I do. He's never been like this. I think when the hungry one threatened her, he realised how important she is to him._

_The hungry one is his rival, that's all, _Cloud said uncertainly.

_No, _the gelding said firmly. _It's always been more than that. _He huffed out a breath. _Smell him, then. Really smell him. Then tell me I'm wrong._

The mare did as she was bid, keeping pace with her companion by sheer instinct as she focused intently on the stork-man's scent. He smelled tired and uneasy, as he had done since before they had left to cross the sea, and under that she could smell the sour notes of fear and anger that had clung to him since his return, and under _that... _She snorted as though to try and dislodge the scent from her nostrils, shaking her head. _I'll bite him for this._

_Don't, _Spots said almost pleadingly. _Let him be. I don't think he knows yet. Two-leggers don't know their instincts the way we do._

_How could he not realise he wants her? _she demanded of him. _It's obvious now you've said it._

The gelding snorted softly, clear affection for his master in his attitude as he replied, _It's obvious to us, but not to him. He's never looked for more than a single mating with any female since I've known him. This is different, and he doesn't know anything about it. Let him alone._

_The stork-man runs blind, _Cloud muttered, blowing out a breath. _What will he do when he _does _realise?_

Spots thought about it for a while. He had been with Numair for seven or eight years by this point, and for the last three years had been under the Wildmage's influence as well. Not only did he know his master very well, he had the human intellect needed to think about the problem. _Nothing, _he said finally. _He'll ignore his instincts and he'll do nothing. It will do strange things to him, but he'll pretend it isn't happening._

_What sort of stallion is he? _she demanded, exasperated.

_The two-legger kind. They always complicate things. _The two horses shared a moment of laughter before the piebald asked curiously, _What would she do if she knew? She's known him since she was a foal._

_I don't know. Sometimes she reacts like one of us; sometimes she's pure two-legger. I know she doesn't want any of the colts who sniff around her sometimes, _Cloud said thoughtfully. _I don't know if that's because she wants someone stronger, or because she doesn't want a mate at all. It seems to change._

* * *

Shortly after Midwinter, the two horses allowed themselves to be led out of the warmth of the stables into a chilly winter's dawn and stood shivering, their breath steaming in the cold, as they were tacked up ready for another journey. Daine arrived first, stifling a yawn as she greeted them the same as she always did; Numair was slower in showing up and was obviously in an odd mood, appearing distracted and uneasy. Spots whickered to his master drowsily before snorting suddenly, raising his head. _There. I told you so.  
_

Cloud blinked and turned her head, extending her nose a little towards the mage and sniffing the air. Her ears went back and she snorted, switching her tail. _You were right, _she admitted grudgingly. _He does want her as a mate. And now he knows it._

The two horses continued to discuss this new development intently throughout the trip, refusing to tell Daine what they were talking about. Even as night fell and the two humans drifted into uneasy sleep on either side of the fire, the two stood nose to nose, deep in conversation.

* * *

On the third or fourth night on the road, Cloud blew out a breath in a long sigh. _He's not sleeping again._

_No, _Spots agreed, giving his master a worried glance. _I've never seen him like this before. He seems so... hurt._

_Like he's bleeding, _she agreed warily. _Even for a two-legger, that's strange. We've seen two-leggers in love in this place before. None of them have been like this._

The gelding flicked an ear and shifted his weight. _He's not like most two-legger stallions. He... sometimes he doesn't seem to understand what he is._

_What?_

_It's hard to explain. I think part of him still thinks of himself as an awkward colt. Part of the reason he's never looked for a true mate is because he doesn't really think he deserves one, I think. He's been very lonely._

_He still is, _Cloud said quietly. Even though she would never admit it, she liked the stork-man. He was kind to her even though she bit him sometimes, and he had been very good for Daine.

The two horses regarded the mage soberly. He was lying curled up on his right side the way he always did, his eyes were closed and his breathing was slow and even, but they could tell that he wasn't asleep. To them, he smelled of worry and guilt and a kind of bewildered hurt that bordered on despair. Finally Spots said slowly, as though it was a revelation, _He thinks she won't accept him._

_Really? _Cloud asked doubtfully. _They've been herd-mates for years. More than we are. Sometimes it's as if there's nobody else in their herd, just the two of them. Why would she say no?_

_Who knows how two-leggers think? _Spots answered wearily. _He's always been worried that the others will drive him out of the herd someday. I suppose because of what happened to him before he came here. _Numair talked to himself a lot, and for years he had frequently been out on the road by himself. Spots knew a great deal about his master that the mage would probably be quite embarrassed to learn.

_She's the same, _Cloud agreed softly. The pony added with a hint of humour, _I suppose they're well matched. There are worse stallions than the stork-man._

_That's generous of you. Going to stop biting him, then?_

_Of course not. He's got to prove himself, after all, _the pony said wickedly.

_Bet you a year's apples she says yes, if he ever gets up the courage to approach her._

_No bet._

The pair exchanged amused looks and settled down, relaxing slowly and closing their eyes, secure in the knowledge that they knew their humans far better than the humans knew themselves.

* * *

_This is probably one of my favourite pieces, actually. The horses are tremendous fun to write; you definitely haven't seen the last of them. And every animal with any sense of smell at all would know instantly how Numair felt about Daine; and since Daine herself remained completely oblivious until he actually kissed her, we can only conclude that none of the People saw fit to enlighten her._

_When you think about it, Cloud and Spots must know an awful lot about their humans - including a lot of things I suspect the humans would prefer that they didn't know. An interesting thought to dwell on. Some of my regular reviewers seem to have gone missing - I hope you guys are all right? Anyway, as always, many thanks for all your thoughts and opinions. Your reviews make me smile.  
_

**_Loten._**


	15. Drabble: Memories

_**Drabble: Memories**_

_I wanted to work this into one of the main stories, but I never found a good place for it. It fits more or less anywhere in the timeline.

* * *

_

Numair had always claimed that he had no memory of the early days with Daine, that the drugs in his system had left him unable to remember anything until he had shifted back. That wasn't strictly true. He did remember the first time he'd seen her, gleaming copper fire not quite obscuring her features; he remembered her speaking softly to him, her hands gentle as she set his broken wing, her smile as she tried to reassure him. He remembered her voice calling his name, calling him _home, _and he remembered feeling a sense of peace and safety that had been absent for much of his life.

It was one of his most treasured memories.

* * *

_I'll be honest, this update is mostly because I feel guilty about not finishing _Little By Little _yet. I promise the epilogue is on its way and should be done within the next few days._

_**Loten.**  
_


	16. Drabble: Small Victories

_**Drabble: Small Victories**_

_I'm updating today because it's my birthday (I'm 23, oh God, I'm so OLD) and I want to share the happy. Just a vaguely amusing drabble from somewhere during/after Wild Magic.  
_

_

* * *

_

He didn't even bother to look up from his book. "Nice try, magelet."

"What?" she asked, confused and trying to sound innocent.

"You're the daughter of a midwife and the granddaughter of a farmer, and I've been teaching you what little you didn't already know about mammalian, avian, reptilian, amphibious and aquatic reproduction for months. Did you honestly think that I would believe you don't know how the process works amongst humans?" he asked mildly. "Besides, you're a terrible liar."

She felt herself beginning to blush furiously, dropping her eyes. He turned a page, still apparently engrossed in his book, and added absently, "I hope you at least had the sense to bet Master Larse and his friends that I would see through the attempt. Unless it was Onua or Alanna who put you up to this instead."

Deciding not to try answering that, Daine slunk away in defeat, blushing harder as he called after her, "You would have found such a talk far more embarrassing than I would, magelet, I promise you that!"

* * *

_This was originally going to be a proper one-shot, but this was the funny part and I didn't really feel like writing a long set-up for it. I've seen a few fics around where Numair gets horribly embarrassed by the subject of _The Talk, _but come on - even he can't lose them all!_

_Also, _Little By Little _and _Affirmation _have been nominated to the Knighthood of Ficship by a certain stalker of mine. Once voting opens, I assure you I will let you all know._

_Proper updates are in development, but for those of you following my Works in Progress section on my profile, you can see I'm a little busy when it comes to fics! I'm still working on odd bits and pieces for this series, though._

_Reviews as birthday presents, please?  
_

_**Loten.**  
_


	17. Left Behind

_**Left Behind  
**_

_**Summary: **__We all know what happened to Numair and Daine at Midsummer, but there was someone else present at the fight with the Skinners. Poor Spots.  
_

_**Timeline: **__Mid-RotG_

_**Genre: **__...I don't really know. Sort of angst, but sort of not, and a bit of humour.  
_

_**Notes: **There's a purpose to this update; please check out the note at the end. Been a while since we had one of those!

* * *

_

When everything went quiet at last, Spots very cautiously peered out of the trees. Being a mage's horse, he was used to seeing – and hearing, and smelling – some very peculiar things and enduring some truly frightening events, but this had been bad even by his standards. The People had fled the area long since, and seeing what the things had done to the land, the gelding understood why. He rather wished he was fleeing too, but he wasn't sure he had the energy for even a short gallop; he'd never travelled so much in his life as he had done since the last Big Cold.

Everything was very, very quiet. It was a dead silence, and not in the way the two-leggers used the phrase. Spots had once overheard his master debating with someone about whether a falling tree in a forest made a sound if there was nobody there to hear it; the question didn't make sense. There was always someone in a forest, even if it was only a squirrel. But not now – he knew he was the only living thing for some distance.

–_Daine?_– he called plaintively, knowing he wasn't going to get an answer. When only silence greeted him, the gelding took a deep breath, laying his ears back against his skull as sweat broke out on his withers; stepping from the shelter of the trees was one of the hardest things he had ever done.

Slowly the piebald walked into the dead zone of destroyed vegetation, the acrid smell of the – things – filling his nostrils. He shied violently when he encountered one of them, now turned to frozen water and beginning to drip; that wasn't two-legger fire that had done that. Tense, he sidled past it and cautiously stepped closer to the heart of the disturbance he had hidden from, sniffing warily at the disturbed earth and looking around. –_Daine?_– he called again, flicking an ear uncertainly.

What had happened to them? He could smell them both clearly; Daine's scent was everywhere, pine trees and hay and wild flowers, and this was Numair's scent, spices and odd two-legger smells and the sharp, hot scent of fire and lightning. This was Daine's bow; he sniffed the broken pieces and whickered uneasily, cutting off the sound sharply when it seemed to echo in the frightening silence. They had both been here, fighting the monsters, and now the monsters were dead and they were no longer here.

The big horse shifted his weight, turning his head to keep a wary eye on his surroundings as he thought about things. He _knew _Daine was still alive; he would feel it if she died, as would any of the People. She wasn't here, but she was definitely alive. But what of Numair? Much as he loved his master, there was no such bond there. He wouldn't feel it if the mage had been killed. Cautiously, Spots began walking in a slow circle around the place where they had fought, carefully sniffing over every inch of ground.

The patient and thorough examination took him some time. At the end of it, he could find no scent of blood or death. Numair hadn't died here, at least. Presumably, he was now wherever Daine had gone – the gelding flicked an ear, momentary amusement brightening his mood. Of course he would be. His master wouldn't allow Daine to go anywhere without him. The amusement faded – it didn't mean that Numair was alive. If Daine had gone somewhere – without having time to warn him, or any others of the People – she might not have gone willingly; if someone had taken her... Well. Spots remembered very clearly how horribly off balance his master had been after the last time that had happened. Numair still hadn't recovered from that.

Looking around him, the gelding switched his tail uncertainly. The frozen monsters were melting quickly in the summer heat and were almost gone already; soon there would be no sign that anything had happened, just some torn earth and the strange dying trees. And Daine's bow; he nudged it with a hoof and wondered what he should do now. He wanted to go and find them, but he had no idea where to start looking.

They had to be alive. He knew Daine was, and if something had killed Numair, he didn't think she would have been. In her own way, she was as protective of her herd as his master was, and for much the same reason – he and Cloud had been joking about it again only a few days ago. Thinking of Cloud brought the pony to his mind, and he turned to look back towards the city, wondering what he was going to tell her. _And Kitten, too, _he realised slowly; the dragon was going to be devastated. So was Cloud, come to that; for all her brash manner and harsh temper, the mare was utterly devoted to Daine, and despite her habit of biting him she was genuinely fond of Numair.

Spots thought about his master with a pang. He'd been Numair's horse for more years than he knew how to count; certainly several Big Colds before Daine had come to their herd. Before that, he'd been pushed from stable to stable, because he wasn't quite the right sort of horse. Too big for a child's pony, too placid for a warhorse, too solid for a hunter or a racer, too lean for a plough horse, unable to stand at stud since he had been gelded, and piebalds were too unfashionable to simply be ridden for pleasure. Nobody had wanted him, and Stefan had been very worried. And then Numair had come.

The gelding didn't really remember it clearly now; he had only very vague and fuzzy memories of most things before Daine had arrived. But he knew the Lioness had asked Stefan to find a big, calm horse suitable for a powerful mage who wasn't a very good rider – that had turned out to be an understatement! – and Stefan had chosen Spots out of almost desperation, because he didn't know what else to do with the horse. Spots remembered that Numair – he'd been called something else then, but that was two-leggers for you – Numair had spoken kindly to him and stroked his nose and offered him half an apple and had seemed pleased. They'd been together ever since.

He looked around again at the desolation surrounding him, and shivered despite the heat of the afternoon. The two-leggers had been so tired; all the members of their little herd were tired, from humans to horses to immortals. And these monsters were like nothing Spots had seen; nothing Numair had seen either, the gelding supposed, since otherwise his master would have disposed of them quickly. The horse had never seen anything Numair couldn't beat. Something had obviously gone very wrong, and now... they had vanished. And his master might be dead.

Spots stamped a hoof, annoyed with himself. _If Cloud was here, she would bite me and tell me to stop moping, _the gelding told himself sternly. _So stop moping and do something. _He began another careful circle of the area, looking for tracks. He wasn't a predator and his hunting skills were virtually nonexistent – grass didn't require stalking, after all – but he could still work out the path Numair had taken towards the monsters after he had left the horse in the living part of the forest. And there were Daine's tracks when she had changed from a bird to a two-legger. The two of them had met up, and the unmistakeable smell of Numair's magic filled the air where their tracks met. They had fought, then. And the monsters were now dead, but Spots didn't think it was his master who had done it, at least not the frozen ones he had seen.

Switching his tail, the horse looked around in the oppressive silence. –_Daine?_– he called once more, without much hope. She wasn't going to answer – if she could have done, she would already have spoken to him to tell him not to worry. Wherever she was, she was a long way from here. As for Numair... the gelding shook his head and snorted. Numair could _not_ be dead. He wouldn't accept it. They were both alive and they would both be coming home, because that was what they did.

With that settled, the gelding took a final look around the area. They had fought the monsters and they were now somewhere else. He could smell fear and exhaustion and magic and anger, but there was no trace of blood or pain, so he didn't think either of them was injured, wherever they were. There were no tracks leading away from the place. Their footprints just... stopped. Nothing else had been here to remove the tracks. He couldn't think of anything else to look for; he was the only one of the People here, so he couldn't ask anyone else if they had seen what happened. There didn't seem to be anything else to do here, so he supposed he should go back to the city and tell Kitten and Cloud what had happened, and try to find a way to let the two-leggers know. He chewed pensively at his bit, staring at the point where Numair's tracks vanished. _You had better come back, stork-man. I don't want another rider.

* * *

_Spots had dawdled as much as possible on the way back, constantly hoping to hear Daine calling to him and telling him that they were back, that it was all right, asking him to come back and collect them. Even after he had given up hope of that happening, he had lingered, because he didn't want to go and tell his herd that two of them were lost, and he wasn't sure of how to get the message to the other two-leggers. Perhaps if he told Kitten, she could tell Tkaa, and he could tell them? It was all very complicated. Quite apart from anything else, a riderless horse who still had his bridle and saddle attracted attention, which was another reason to travel carefully.

For such a big horse, the piebald could be surprisingly sneaky when he had to be, and he managed to get all the way to the stables without being seen. He wished this was Corus, not Legann; he wanted his own stable. Sighing wearily, the horse trudged slowly into the yard, his head low, and waited for someone to notice him. _Cloud?_

_Spots! You're back? But – why didn't – where are they? They sent you back alone?_

The gelding shivered, by now desperately unhappy. _Oh, Cloud, something went wrong. I don't know where they are._

By the sound of it, the pony was now making a determined attempt to kick her way through the wall of her stable. Both of them were able to undo bolts and latches, but it was definitely Spots' particular skill; he could even undo knots, sometimes, but Cloud didn't have the patience. The noise had attracted attention; a two-legger had recognised the piebald as Numair's horse, and there was a lot of running about going on. Spots ignored it as Cloud finally managed to let herself out and galloped over to him, sniffing him thoroughly from ears to tail. _What happened? _she demanded.

_I don't know, _the gelding replied helplessly. He explained what he did know, telling her about the monsters tearing the skin from the trees and describing the scene when he had left it, complete with everything he had seen and smelled and what he had reasoned out while he was thinking. Kitten had shown up by that point, her scales changing colour rapidly from the white of shock to a grey-blue so deep it was almost black as the young dragon began to keen uncertainly.

–_Kitten, hush,_– Spots told her gently. –_Daine isn't dead, I know she isn't. And I don't think Numair is. They'll come back._– He lowered his head to nuzzle at her small wings, lipping at her scales gently.

_They'd better,_ Cloud snapped. _This was his fault, I know it. She always follows him into danger and she always gets hurt because of him!_

Spots very slowly raised his head, his ears going back as he regarded his friend and companion, before he did something he had never done before. He lunged forward and bit her, hard, just above the withers. They argued and play-fought occasionally, he'd nipped her often enough, and she often snapped at him, but he had never seriously struck at her before, and he was a much larger and stronger horse. As she squealed, he let go and spun around, kicking at her. _Don't say that!_

The pony backed away, staring at him in shock and almost fear, whickering uncertainly. The gelding stamped and glared at her, baring his teeth, realising as he did so just how worried he was. For all his words to Kitten and all his careful reasoning, there was a good chance that Numair might well be dead. The two-leggers seemed taken aback by the outburst, too; the horse noted absently that their herd-stallion was here, the one with blue fire.

_I'm sorry, _Cloud said finally, relaxing and coming forward to touch noses with him gently. _I think you were right, I don't think he's dead. There would have been some sign if he had been. They'll come back._

_Yes, they will, _Spots agreed firmly as the two-leggers began to advance on him, rather more cautiously than usual in the face of the unexpected aggression the usually placid gelding had just shown. There was a lot of chatter about whether or not he was injured and speculation about what might have happened; the horse ignored it and them, backing away from their hands. He didn't want anyone touching him. Numair might be a hopelessly ungraceful rider, but he was good at all the other parts of horse care, at grooming and checking feet and putting on or taking off tack, and Spots didn't want anyone else doing it.

_Don't be stupid, _Cloud advised as she graciously permitted herself to be 'caught', returning to her stall with her head high. _At least let them take your saddle and bridle off. You can't eat with a bit, and your hide is all sweaty._

_I don't care,_ the gelding replied obstinately, glaring and stamping as the two-leggers came closer. Kitten, sitting between the horse's forelegs, sat up slowly and chirped; Spots snorted and shied slightly as his saddle girth came undone beneath his belly, and the motion dislodged his bridle as it unbuckled itself on his face. It was a very strange sensation, but he had to admit it was a relief to have the tack off. –_Thank you,_– he told the small dragon gravely, and she chirruped in response and rubbed her head against his knee. Tossing his head disdainfully, Spots walked to his stall, ignoring everyone in what Cloud described admiringly as a marvellous display of sulking.

* * *

When the badger showed up with the news of what had happened to Daine and Numair some days later, the god stopped at the stables to speak to Kitten, who had started sleeping in Spots' stall, and to Tkaa who was watching her. The immortal spoke to the horses as well, and when he departed, Spots reared and pawed the air and neighed as enthusiastically as any stallion. _I told you so!_

Cloud gave him an amused look. _You're worryingly like the stork-man, you know._

The piebald sniffed. _I'm taking that as a compliment._

She snorted at him and flicked an ear. _I wish I was there._

_Why?_

_Because human dams are very protective of their foals, and I remember Sarra. Your stork-man had better be careful._

Spots would have laughed if he could have, flicking his tail and blowing out a breath. _They'll be together when they come back, _he stated confidently.

_You think so?_

_Yes. I know him, and he can't keep quiet for much longer. And she's not going to say no._

_True, _Cloud conceded mockingly, before the pony sighed and gave her companion a serious look. _Spots... they may not come back, you know. This sounds more dangerous than anything they've done before._

The gelding twitched an ear and rested his chin on the partition between their stalls. _They'll come back, _he replied simply with calm and unshakeable faith. _He wouldn't let it happen any other way. Nor would she._

* * *

And when Daine did return, her mind mostly on Numair back with the queen's fleet as Diamondflame appeared in the skies above Legann, she was greeted by two indignant voices from the stables that cut through the general clamour: –_What kept you?_–

_

* * *

_

_I hope you all find the notion that Spots talks to himself just like Numair does ridiculously cute. I know I do. This has to be one of my favourite stories I've written, I think – I love Spots' point of view and I love the relationship he has with Numair in my head._

_Well, folks, it's that time of year again - the Knighthood of Ficship contest is running again. And, yet again, I'm shamelessly begging for votes. I've got two stories running again, _Little By Little _and _Affirmation, _and I'd really appreciate it if you guys could mosey on down to the forums and vote for me. I'm in two categories this time, Knighthood Multi-Chapter and Knighthood One-shot, so if you guys could vote in both, that'd be super awesome and I'd adore you all and write more silly horse fics for you. (Maybe)._

_Link: _forum . fanfiction . net /forum/The_Ficship_Competitions/54838/

_Thanks, everyone. _

_**Loten.**  
_


	18. Names

_**Names  
**_

_**Summary: **__Why did Numair choose that name for himself?  
_

_**Timeline: **__Anywhere after Emperor Mage  
_

_**Genre: **__Humour  
_

_**Notes: **An odd snippet of a story, this one. The idea occurred to me and I scribbled it down before I forgot; it's not complete. I wanted to work it in to one of my stories but never really found a place for it, so I'm shoving it in here. It's more than a drabble but less than a one-shot._

_Well, that was the idea, anyway. Although tweaking it for upload this evening, it's mutated into a proper - if silly - one-shot. Oops._

_

* * *

_

"I've been meaning to ask you for years... when you changed your name, did it – I mean, does it mean anything?" Daine asked, bored of the silence at last. Working outside was all very well, but she was pretty sure Numair was only pretending to read, and looked close to falling asleep as he lay stretched out on his stomach next to her with his chin propped in his hands staring at his book.

"Mmm," he answered vaguely, confirming her suspicion that he was half-asleep. Slitting his eyes against the sunlight as he looked up, he lifted a hand to shade his face. "It does, actually. Oddly, you're the first person to ask." Rolling onto his side, he propped himself up on one elbow and looked at her thoughtfully. "I'd been thinking of changing my name before I left Carthak. You've heard lots of people joking that I wanted a more impressive name; sadly, that's actually true. Some of the possibilities I thought of..."

He shuddered theatrically and gave her a wry grin. "Even now, it makes me cringe just thinking about it. Anyway, after I fled the Empire, I used false names a lot. Once I came to Corus... I don't remember whose idea it was, actually. Probably George or Myles. Whoever it was, someone suggested that I change my name, to make it less likely that Ozorne would learn where I was. I didn't want an impressive name any more, so I did some thinking, and came up with Numair Salmalín."

"But what does it actually _mean?_"

"Well, 'Salmalín' doesn't translate all that well. It means something like sanctuary, or safe haven. I suppose it's a little melodramatic, now, but at the time I was so relieved that I had a home again..." He shrugged and smiled almost hesitantly, and she smiled back at him.

"Makes sense. It's rather sweet, actually. What about 'Numair'?"

He grinned. "It means 'panther'."

Daine blinked. "Panther? Why panther? I didn't know you particularly liked panthers."

"I've never met any," he told her loftily. "Although if I spend enough time with you I'm sure that will change," he added as an afterthought. "No, that's not why I picked it."

"Why, then?"

He smiled sheepishly, now definitely starting to look embarrassed. "Well..."

"Tell me."

"It was mostly my grandmother's fault, to be honest. She used to call me 'black cat' when I was little," he admitted. "I don't remember if I ever knew why. So I just... scaled up a bit." She started to laugh, and he tried to scowl at her, although his eyes were smiling, which rather ruined the effect. "Oh, shut up."

"Sorry. It's just - you seem to attract animal nicknames," she managed through her giggles. He rolled his eyes at her.

"And people wonder why I don't talk about my past much," he muttered, with no sincerity whatsoever.

"Does Alanna know about this?" she asked wickedly.

Numair's eyes widened slightly. "No."

"What about 'stork-man'?"

That earned her a scowl; Numair really didn't like that nickname, although he never had explained why. "No."

Daine grinned at him. "And does she know about 'Uncle Numy'?"

He went red. "How do _you _know about that?"

"Kally told me." Personally, she thought it was very sweet. Judging by the look of embarrassment on her friend's face, he did not share this opinion. Groaning, he rolled over and buried his head in his arms. After a moment he sat up, looking at her with a surprisingly serious expression.

"You've forced my hand, magelet. I don't like threatening you, you know that. But I warn you now, if you tell _anyone _- of any species - about those particular nicknames, I will personally see to it that everyone of your acquaintance starts calling you Vera. Permanently. Or at least until I think of a worse nickname."

He would, too. Daine thought hard for a few moments, trying to decide whether it would be worth it, and reluctantly decided that no, it wouldn't. Not yet, at least - but it was definitely worth keeping this in reserve. She gave him her most innocent smile. "Now, would I do that to you?"

He stared at her for some time before sighing. "I think lessons are done for today," he told her, standing and retrieving his book before stalking off in a huff. She watched him go, smiling, and wondered briefly what he would do if she started calling _him _Kitten.

_

* * *

_

_This is nonsense, really. TP said she chose the name Numair just because she liked the sound of it. It does mean panther, though - possibly in Armenian? Or did I dream that? - so I invented a cute and unnecessary backstory. Salmal__ín means sanctuary too, but I can't remember what language it is. Anyway, I just liked the idea. And then it turned a bit silly on me - I think Numair was protesting that I haven't written about him recently. He came off worst in this - unsurprisingly - so maybe next time he'll keep quiet.  
_

_The timeline is tricky, too. We're told that Arram changed his name when Ozorne ordered his arrest - but Onua calls him Arram in Wild Magic, which suggests that he was still using that name until after he'd met her. Or else Onua's just a bit thick, since apparently he's been using the name Numair for eight years according to the previous chapter. I like my version, so that's what I'm sticking with.  
_

_It's been a while since I've written anything, hasn't it? Well, actually, no it hasn't. I've been working heavily on my Harry Potter plotbunnies. They won't let me sleep until I write them, you see. It hasn't left much time for other stuff. I just wanted to thank you all for voting in the Ficship contest - naturally, your votes got both my stories into the final (I saw the poll results, and believe me, I was miles ahead of the others! I wish you guys had been the judges). Anyway, Affirmation got fifth in its category and Little By Little got second, which I'm pretty pleased with. Thanks again, everyone._

_I don't know when I'll next be updating. With luck, I'll get one of my long fics finished within the next month or so, and then I'll be uploading that pretty regularly - at least weekly - while I work on other things.  
_

_**Loten.**  
_


	19. Drabble: Presents

_**Drabble: Presents  
**_

_**Summary: **__Self-explanatory  
_

_**Timeline: **__Midwinter between Wolf-Speaker and Emperor Mage  
_

_**Genre: **__None  
_

_**Notes: **__I'll be honest, the only reason I'm bothering to upload this random snippet (which frankly isn't all that great; it's just a drabble) is because of the note at the end when I'm shamelessly begging for a favour from someone._

_

* * *

_

Her Midwinter gift had been an impulse purchase. He'd been wandering aimlessly through the market district and had happened to glance into the window of a jewellery shop; as soon as he had seen the bright blue sapphire earrings he had thought of Daine's eyes and decided to buy them for her. The price didn't matter; he had nothing to spend money on but himself and his friends. He didn't particularly care what anyone thought of his giving his student such an expensive present either; it was enough that he liked them and wanted to give them to her. And the look on her face when she unwrapped them was well worth it.

_

* * *

_

_I don't really like writing drabbles much. This one was lying around in a document of half-written bits and pieces. Meh._

_Anyway, the favour... (it's not needed any more but it was about the Full Cast Audio recording of Realms of the Gods.)  
_

_**Edit: **Gods, you people are amazing. I've already had two messages offering to pass on copies of theirs for free. I adore all of you. Thank you so much.  
_

_**Loten.**  
_


	20. Closure

_**Closure  
**_

_**Summary: **__It's not easy to let go of the past... Numair says goodbye to part of his old life and begins to move on.  
_

_**Timeline: **__A couple of months after Realms of the Gods; probably somewhere around the end of Little By Little, or just after.  
_

_**Genre: **__Soft angst, maybe? Nothing too depressing, I hope.  
_

_**Notes: **__I really don't quite know where this came from. I missed writing Numair-introspection, and I've mentioned several times that he deserved more closure than he got. So, enjoy.  
_

_

* * *

_

Numair wasn't quite sure why he was doing this. The end of the summer and the start of the autumn had been very busy; now that things were finally starting to calm down and return to normal, he should have been back at the palace, curled up in bed with Daine and trying to catch up on months of missed sleep, or finding more pleasant things to occupy them both. Instead, he was out here, flying through a miserably damp afternoon not far from Legann, hawk's-eye vision scanning the war-ravaged landscape.

He'd had more than enough of this place the last time they'd been here, but despite that, here he was again. Alone, which wasn't really helping his state of mind; he hadn't told Daine where he was going, only that he had something he wanted to do on his own. She hadn't argued; he suspected she knew what he was doing – she always had been able to read him better than anyone else. He really didn't want company for this, but perversely he still missed her.

_The quicker you get this stupidity over with, the sooner you can go home, _he told himself, not for the first time, and banked slowly, wheeling into a broad circle as he scanned the landscape again. All right... well, over _there _was Legann itself, the land around it churned up from the armies that had fought there; winter would bury the ground in snow, and come spring there would be little sign that anything had happened. Nature recovered quickly. And over _there, _a league or so distant, was the area of ground where he and Hadensra had duelled; he shivered reflexively, noting the blackened ground. That would take longer to recover; to his eyes, the landscape still glittered with the residue of their Gifts. His destination today, however, lay elsewhere.

The black hawk flew on slowly, gliding when he could, trying to save energy – it had been a long flight, and he suspected it would be spring before _he _recovered, too; he was still bone-weary. They all were. _All the more reason to stop messing around, go home and rest, _he chided himself. He wasn't sure this was necessary, but it felt like something that he needed to do. At the very least, it might help stop his dreams; Daine was tolerant of his restless sleep, since she had her own share of nightmares, but he was getting fed up with it.

He stopped and circled, flying higher to see more of the land below him. This was approximately the right place, but it was still a large area to search. It would have been more sensible to bring Daine with him, or at least to have asked her for more details, but... but he hadn't, and it was a bit late to regret that now. He'd decided to do this alone, for whatever reason; _so be it. _He started to quarter the ground, surveying it as methodically as he could manage, reminded for a moment of watching Stormwings searching for him in the same manner four years ago.

Thoughts of Stormwings led to thoughts of Rikash as well as the real reason he was here, and he sighed, pushing the thoughts away and paying attention to what he was doing. The war was over; if the gods were kind, he'd never have to see a war again. He wasn't cut out for it. _Surely the gods owe us a favour, _he mused sardonically, briefly amused at the thought; he didn't think it worked like that, somehow. _Pay attention, Numair. It's cold up here. _

Finally he spotted a faint glimmer of magical residue that wasn't the Gift, and dropped closer to look. Stormwing magic was red and gold, for some reason; there were traces of it, but mostly the gleam he could see was a strange oily shimmer, reddish-greenish-purple with sparks of the silver-white fire that he associated with divine magic. _Chaos. _Spiralling downwards into the trees, he found a clear space to land and shifted back to human form, taking a few minutes to stretch and wincing as his joints protested. It wasn't only his mind that was tired; the past year had given him an unwelcome insight into what old age would be like, assuming he lived that long.

"I really am in a cheerful mood," he muttered, running his fingers into his hair and pulling it back into a tail once more, tying it out of his way as he replaced the hair tie he'd lost somewhere. Then again, his mood was perhaps understandable, given why he was here. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he began walking towards the shimmer he had seen from the air.

It was unnaturally quiet; over the past four years he'd learned to pay close attention to the animals and birds around him, and there were very few here, which indicated that he was probably in the right place. He was downwind, too, which provided him with another clue to his destination; grimacing, he swallowed and switched to breathing through his mouth. Nothing would eat a dead Stormwing, including other Stormwings. No animal would ever be _that _desperate. After a few minutes Numair moved into the open and spotted a half-hidden gleam of metal; slowly he walked over and stood looking down at the thing he had sought.

Ozorne didn't look any better in death than he had in life, especially since the part of him that was human flesh had decayed considerably over the couple of months since the battle. His features were unrecognisable now, which was perhaps for the best, but it was definitely him; the hair gave it away, still braided in places. Numair smiled mirthlessly, remembering Rikash promising to keep a braid as a souvenir. _You never did catch up to him, old friend. Too busy playing two-legger hero like a fool from a saga. _

Studying the remains of the immortal's corpse, Numair moved upwind and crouched, hunkering down on his heels. "Hello, Ozorne."

He regarded the twisted metal and rotting flesh that was all that remained of the former Emperor Mage, but his dark eyes weren't seeing a dead Stormwing. He was remembering a confident, arrogant boy with a bold smile and a quick temper, who had once befriended an awkward young mage. That had been about fifteen years ago; not very long in the history of the world, but it felt like several lifetimes. Both of them had changed a great deal since then.

Pensively, he thought about Carthak. He had been happy enough as a student, mostly; he'd always felt a bit out of place, a little restless, never truly happy, but he hadn't been unhappy either. And whatever Ozorne believed, he really had been the Emperor's friend, and would never have betrayed him. Once, he would have died for Ozorne without a second thought; a year ago, he'd been willing to die in order to kill him.

"Life's a funny thing," he said quietly to the dead immortal. "Well, ironic, rather than funny, I suppose. Not that you'd know. You brought it all on yourself, you know. If you'd just left Daine alone, you probably would have got away with it. I was terrified of you and I would have been happy to stay well clear of you, but... well, you said it yourself. You knew how I felt about her, even if I didn't. But you didn't realise just how far we were both willing to go for each other – she was the only reason I was there in the first place. If you'd left her alone, I wouldn't have used that simulacrum to let you think you'd won. And if you hadn't gone after me, she wouldn't have let the Graveyard Hag use her to bring you down. You never did understand love, and for that, I think I actually feel sorry for you."

Numair rocked back on his heels, studying what was left of Ozorne's face. "If you had understood it, things might have been different. I loved you like a brother, once. But I couldn't do what you asked me to, and I don't think I can ever forgive you for _almost _persuading me. It was all a game to you, wasn't it?" he continued quietly. "You never really thought about the fact that your playing pieces were made of flesh and blood. In that, you really were the equal of the gods. I don't know about you, but I find that pretty ironic, really." He shrugged. "I've lost track of the times you've tried to kill me and Daine. There are probably a few attempts we never knew about. I don't suppose it matters. You _lost, _Ozorne. And you didn't have to. All we ever wanted was to be left alone. You got greedy, you had to keep trying to kill me, when the first time was more than enough, and you targeted our home and the people we care about. And you _lost._"

Slowly the mage stood up again, stepping closer, ignoring the smell as he stared down at the remains of the Stormwing. He remembered that final confrontation in Carthak; he had been filled with rage and hate unlike anything he had ever known, until he'd seen Daine alive and well and realised that nothing else really mattered very much. He still hated Ozorne, and always would – '_no rage like love to hatred turn'd',_ his mind supplied idly – but the anger was gone. His body still bore the scars his former friend had inflicted on him, and he would carry those scars until the day he died, but that didn't really matter any more either. What was important was that Ozorne was dead and wouldn't be able to try again, that Numair and Daine were both alive.

He almost smiled. "You know, Ozorne, in a way, I think I owe you my thanks. Indirectly, your actions helped bring me and Daine together. I like that particular irony. Wherever you ended up in the Black God's realm, I hope you're watching what you helped create, and I hope it eats at you until the end of days. And I hope that when I die I never have to see you again." He reached for his Gift, black fire glittering with white sparks gathering around his hands, and spoke a word.

The Stormwing's body burst into flames, the fire reflecting in Numair's dark eyes as he watched silently. The heat from the fire drove the autumn's chill away from him and drafts stirred his hair and clothing as he slowly raised his hands, the flames rising higher at his command. The smell was absolutely atrocious, burning meat and hair and rot, but he ignored it as his hands closed into fists and the fire burned hotter, hot enough that the metal feathers of the Stormwing's wings and claws began to melt into rivulets of shining silver.

By the time the fire died down, the heat had dried tears that he hadn't realised he had shed. There was little left of the Stormwing, only some twisted and half-melted metal that would eventually be absorbed into the earth. Nature recovered quickly; before even a full year had passed, there would be nothing left to mark the former Emperor Mage's passing, and Daine and Numair would be the only ones who would know where he had died.

Numair lowered his hands and gestured slightly; a chill breeze sprang up, carrying away the last of the smoke and the smell of the burning. It had started to rain, and the air now smelled fresh and clean again. Tucking his hands into his pockets, the mage regarded the small patch of burned ground and inclined his head slightly. "Goodbye, Ozorne Muhassain Tasikhe," he said quietly, before turning and walking away. Once he was out of sight, he shifted shape, and the black hawk spiralled upwards, already turning towards home.

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_See, I'm not dead! In fact, I've been quite busy writing-wise. You can expect to see my first long Harry Potter story starting before Christmas. If anyone's interested in keeping up with what I'm doing, I update my profile semi-regularly._

_The quote Numair thinks is by William Congreve: the full quote, which is quite famous, is, "Heav'n has no rage like love to hatred turn'd, nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned." Just a bit of nerdy knowledge for you.  
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_**Loten.**  
_


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